


Idyllic

by littlenoona



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 90s miami, AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Canon Typical Violence, Consensual Underage Sex, Drugs, F/F, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pregnancy, Recreational Drug Use, Teen Angst, Teen Pregnancy, Teen Romance, Underage - Freeform, Underage Drinking, Violence, dubcon kinda bc of the age issue, heavily influenced by romeo & juliet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:25:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4233789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlenoona/pseuds/littlenoona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU set in 90s Miami. </p>
<p>(or the fic where the baratheons and starks are launched into a bloody, gritty turf war, jon tries to be rational, all theon wants to do is party, joffrey is still an asshole, catelyn stark wants to save her children, trystane martell wants myrcella, no one really knows what happened to rhaegar and lyanna, arys loves alysanne, and all anyone can agree on anymore is keeping robb and myrcella away from each other.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A PROLOGUE - A VIOLENT LOVE WITH A VIOLENT END

**Author's Note:**

> This story was an entry for the 2013 ASoIaF Tumblr Big Bang, and I've been heavily editing it and trying to make it perfect because it's my baby, and I hope you enjoy. I don't own anything except all original characters, and I don't claim to own anything but. This story was heavily influenced and inspired by Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.

_were we too young?_   
_our heads too strong_   
_to bear the weight_   
_of these lovers’ eyes_   
_\- lovers’ eyes—mumford & sons_

The heavens are weeping, throwing and thrashing about, wailing as they mourn the deaths of two innocent children—because, _really_ , Jon Snow thinks as he watches both Starks and Baratheons and Lannisters alike weep, _they were just children_ —who got caught up in their parents’ petty squabbles. The rain stings, soaking the mourners to the skin in about a minute flat. The wind is having a field day with hats and umbrellas and the like, blowing them around angrily. And it’s cold, unnaturally so for Miami.

Jon shivers.

All of Miami is in a state of mourning, and has been for the last week or so. If he looks down the hill, he can see the vultures everyone calls the press trying to climb over the cemetery walls to snap pictures of what’s supposed to be an intimate session of grief for both families. There’s no respect for the dead or those who mourn them and it makes Jon sad and just a little angry. Selmy notices this as well and goes over to take care of them and tell them to let these families grieve in peace (or else). There are cameras peeking over the high gates of the cemetery, and microphones, tape recorders. It makes Jon sick. All these families want is to have a private session to mourn and grieve over their children, not to be picked at and made a spectacle out of.

It’s a sea of black as far as the eye can see, black shirts and ties and dresses with hats with gauze veils and white handkerchiefs. The only actually spots of color come from the flower arrangements. Jon morbidly thinks that the florists in the city must be making quite the pretty penny with all the commotion that's been going on lately.

Cersei wears a small veil of black and sobs into Joffrey’s shoulder. (She was her only daughter, after all.) Joffrey holds an umbrella over his mother’s head as they look into the grave sadly. Jon can’t tell if he’s sad about the deaths or if he’s sad that there’s one less person for him to torment and ’accidentally’ push into the wooden banister. Tommen’s crying and blubbering into Septa Alysanne’s flowy black skirts. To be honest, the kid can’t really be blamed for being so affected by her death because she was his only friend, besides his cats and toys, that is, and now he was really all alone.

Arys looks a little more put together, and so does Septa Alysanne Royce—in all his years he doesn’t think he’s ever seen either one of them in such a sad and sorry state and there have been more than enough occasions for them to be as upset as they are now. They’re as distraught as anyone else, dabbing at their eyes with white handkerchiefs as they look into the graves sadly. Jon has a feeling that they’ve shed all their tears behind closed doors, quiet and alone, because they had to be strong for everyone else. (That’s something they unfortunately have in common.)

And then there’s Robert, who threatens to pop the buttons off the suit that he obviously hasn’t worn in years, sullen and silent as he looks into the double grave. Ned Stark, as austere as ever, lets his hand rest on the beefy man’s shoulder, in a semblance of a gesture of sympathy. They were friends, once, but it was so long ago that it seems like it was in another life. Is this really what it’s going to take to get them to make up? Was it worth it? Jon scowls, eyes narrowing slightly. Sansa’s normally cheerful face is grim and pale as she cries into Margaery Tyrell’s shoulder, shaking like a leaf, and why shouldn’t she? This is all kind of her fault. Sort of.

(Jon knows, somewhere deep inside, that it’s unfair to blame her for how this all turned out—she was just a girl with fleeting, idyllic notions of what love truly meant—but he still does, because he was his _best friend_ , damn it, and now he’s... he can't even finish the sentence. The thought makes him feel ill, remnants of the breakfast he could barely eat crawling up his throat bitterly.)

Arya and Bran are quiet, but that’s just how they’ve always been. Arya is the kind of girl who holds in her grief until no one’s watching and Bran hasn’t said a word since they got the news about Catelyn, which was only a few days ago, so Jon’s a little worried about him. Then there’s Rickon, who’s wailing up a storm into Septa Mordane’s shoulder. (He’s just a little kid and he doesn’t understand that they may never be coming back, and thinks that everyone is sad, but he doesn't know why, not really. Jon wishes he could be innocent like Rickon, see everything in the cute, rosy way he did. He can't, he knows too much.)

Loras holds Tommen’s hand and sniffles, holding onto the umbrella tightly. Renly looks like he hasn’t slept in days, which Jon doesn’t doubt. She was his favorite niece, and Loras was her best friend, after him, after all. Willas stands wobbly on his crutches next to Sansa and Margaery and offers quiet comforts, a gentle hand on Sansa’s trembling shoulder and a murmured consolation. It’s not like he can really do much else. Jon wants to blame Willas too. If anyone could have stopped Sansa, it was him—he was the only person Sansa would listen to, after all.

Septa Mordane and the others console each other softly—these were children they practically raised and had no plans on burying them so soon (or ever, really).

Septon Luwin starts to pray.

It really is kind of sad, in it’s own tragic way, that this feud had to end with so much _blood_. Was it worth it? Was all of this worth losing them, losing everything they tried to hard to fight for? He doesn't know, but he's inclined to think none of this was worth all the tragic pain and sadness. No. It’s with this thought that Jon Snow slips away from the mourners while their heads are still bowed and scales one of the walls that aren’t manned by the press or other mourners—there was a two hour long funeral procession downtown today before the burial but the actual funeral itself is for family only—and walks down the street, opening his black umbrella and blending in with everyone else.

He walks down four blocks, makes a left, and ducks into a coffee shop. He orders some coffee (black, no cream, no sugar) and sits at a corner table and thinks about the events that lead to this moment.

_It all started with Hound and Oakheart…_


	2. BANG BANG // ACT I SCENE I

Arys Oakheart has a list of places he would rather be right now.

Maybe with Septa Alysanne Royce (he calls her Aly for short), making her blush, watching as she quietly asks the Seven for strength, telling him to stop being so crude between mean glances she doesn’t really mean or her quiet laugh. (No he’s not _in_ love. He’s _very much in love_.)

Or with Tommen in the back yard, teaching him how to throw a baseball without breaking any windows. (Hopefully. The kid had pretty bad aim but Arys was hoping he could change that with some quality time and some hand-eye coordination training.)

Shoving Joffrey’s face into the freshly turned soil of his mother’s flower beds for being a generally terrible person doesn’t sound too bad either, because Joffrey really is a thorn in his spine and Arys is just chomping at the bit give the kid what’s coming to him.

Or even watching Myrcella’s routine (again) with Jaime downtown.

But nowhere on that list does it say: _hang out on a busy corner in Miami with enough coke on him to get five years easy with, of all people, Sandor Clegane_ (known to most as the Hound). Yet here he is, breaking a sweat in a brand new suit, all because Hound has a bone to pick with one of the wolves and it’s been rumored that they might be somewhere around here today. Arys is annoyed for one reason, and one reason only: Hound’s unfailing loyalty to those who would rather see him dead has, yet again, interfered in Arys’ life and his personal affairs.

He _just_ bought this suit two days ago, and he was going to wear it to dinner with Alysanne tonight, before Hound decided to ruin his plans. (Arys knows that won’t ever be anything but just friends with Alysanne, but he entertains the vague hope that maybe one day it won’t be that way because he kind of really loves her, sort of. For the record, Alysanne Royce may very well be the only girl Arys has ever truly loved, and the prospect of having to tip-toe around that love upsets him more than anything else.) Anyway, his dinner plans aren’t going to happen anymore, obviously, and he won’t get another chance to go out with her like this for weeks.

And this beef thing is between Ned and Robert, really—and has nothing at all to do with Hound. And when Arys says nothing, he means nothing. It seems like he just gets off on all the gore and violence.

Arys should be at the studio, encouraging Myrcella to keep her back straight and hold out her arms on that balance beam and to be gentle. It was Alysanne’s idea to put her in a gymnastic class after the 1984 Summer Olympics in L.A.—she was glued to the TV for a whole month, flipping on the floor and tumbling and trying to do what those girls did. She was four, he was 21 and Alysanne was only 19. Arys smiles fondly. She could be on the Olympic team now, maybe. She was good enough, wasn’t she? Maybe even better.

“Are you listening?” Sandor grumbles, leaning against a building with his signature frown. “Arys.”

“What? Yes. Of course. I’m always listening,” Arys murmurs condescendingly, keeping an eye out for the pigs. “You’re upset about something or another.” Like always. Arys glances at him, annoyed, before looking out into the street again. “Let’s get some lunch, yeah? They’re obviously not here.”

Sandor shrugs and they make their way through the unsuspecting citizens of Miami. It’s too hot and Arys swears that he steps on one more sticky wad of bubblegum, he’s going to scream. But it’s okay, because soon, the pair takes a seat in a crowded Spanish diner that makes the best quesadillas in the whole wide world. Or at least so they claim, anyway. They sit near the open wall, and Sandor leans the white wooden beam, sighing heavily and mumbling something about this being the life. They order beers—you should stop drinking, Arys, don’t you think?—and the waitress is pretty-ish but Alysanne is prettier, and it makes him kind of sad.

“You’re doing it again,” Sandor says casually, tutting as he sips his beer. Arys is half tempted to order a glass of water but takes a gulp of his beer again. “Arys?”

“What? I’m fine. I’m just thinking.”

“About Alysanne, aren’t you?” Hound counters. “That waitress was all over you and nothing, you just—” Hound shakes his head. “I don’t get it. I don’t get how people like you and those-those Starks and everyone can do it, with your love and honor and blah, blah, blah.” Hound rolled his eyes. “It’s annoying. Don’t you get tired of being so good all the time?”

“It’s called being a decent person,” Arys says, smiling. “You should try it some time. It’s not so bad. You might actually like it. And I’m sorry if I don’t drool and leer at every girl who smiles at me. I’m not as desperate as some of us are.” He winks at Hound, who just grimaces and goes back to scratching the paint of the surface of the wooden table with a heavy sigh. Arys he sinks down in his seat a little, cursing as he glances at the door. It’s them. Out of all the restaurants and bars in the world and in Miami, which was kind of like a small little world in and of itself, the Starks had to come into this one. _This one_.

Knowing Sandor, it was going to get ugly pretty fast unless Arys did some quick thinking.

“I don’t get it,” Hound sighs, shaking his head. "You can’t be together. You won’t ever be together, because—"

"Shut up, Hound."

"What? I’m telling you the truth. You can’t. She doesn’t date, because she’s married to the Seven or whatever and I’m pretty sure you can’t cheat on any of them. It’s against the rules or something," Hound says as he finishes his beer and starts hollering for another one. “Oi!” He’s looking around (that’s no good) and Arys jumps in, laughing.

“You can just take mine.” Hound glares at him, but it’s nothing new. He only has a couple of facial expressions—slightly angry, angry, and very angry.

“I’d rather order my own beer, thank you,” he says pointedly, glancing past Arys. It isn’t hard to miss—his face hardens and he reaches instinctively for his holster.

“Don’t, c’mon—”

“ _Valar morghulis_ , Arys. Let’s roll. They should know better, and they shouldn’t be here, and—”

It all gets a little out of control after that, bullets and chairs and tables flying this way and that.

Arys flinches a little when a bullet flies past his nose and catches one of the beams outside. People are screaming and there’s a kid crying somewhere and he curses, reaching into his back pocket. Instead of his trusty handgun, there’s a post-it from Aly.

_Live by the sword, you die by the sword!—Alysanne_

He loves Alysanne, he does, but moments like these make him want to tear his hair out. She means well, but sometimes it doesn’t go as planned. He rarely ever has any reason to pack heat because he doesn’t personally get involved in the petty feuds and squabbles between the rival gangs because he has bigger things to think of (Alysanne and Myrcella). Today, he had planned to spend the day at the studio, and granted nothing much could really happen among the dirty rich of Miami, but one could never be too careful, especially not with Myrcella.

She had a way of slipping away when she really wanted to.

“Hound,” he whispers as Hound stands up, whipping both his guns out angrily.

“What’s goin’ on, guys? Came to play?” Hound says, ignoring Arys for the moment. Arys holds onto his knife and flicks out the blade, glancing down at it. Maybe he’d get one for Myrcella. Hm. He can’t think about it for very long because Sandor starts yelling and shooting and more tables are getting flipped over and someone’s screaming— _everyone’s screaming_ and _it’s too loud_ and he just wants to _think_ for two seconds, that’s all. He crouches behind his table and pages Jaime quickly, biting his lip.

And then he jumps into the fight because he has to help Sandor, even if he doesn’t like him very much. The Stark bastard’s here too, but he’s trying to get them to cut it out. Doesn’t he understand? This is so much bigger than any of them. It goes back to before he was born and it would probably continue after he died. Arys shakes his head. Sandor seems to be holding his own pretty well, so he isn’t too worried about him. It’s odd—where’s the Young Wolf?

Arys has only been a fight involving Robb—the Young Wolf—once.

He’s heard about how very calmly he’d taken people out and left afterwards—everyone has. Quick, clean, easy—he’s got the job done before you even know what hit you and that was the problem. The kid was good. Too good.

Arys honestly didn’t believe it until he saw it with his own two eyes.

It was two or three months ago at a bar where some stags ran into some wolves. One minute he’s enjoying a nice drink and talking to Jaime about the baseball game they saw earlier in the evening, and the next he’s shooting at Benjen Stark and Robb is beating someone else to a bloody pulp and screaming something about selling on their own turf. ( _"If I ever catch you selling on my turf, I’ll end you,"_ he threatened softly, pressing his knife against Kettleblack’s carotid, hands even and pale against Kettleblack’s trembling light tan skin. _"You’re never coming around here again. I don’t even care if it’s for gas or to get some strange or whatever you like to do on Saturday nights. Do you understand me? I hope I’m making myself crystal clear here. Can’t sell when you’re dead, am I right?"_ Robb smiled and patted his bloody cheek with a soft smile. Arys felt his blood run cold. The kid’s a maniac.)

He doesn’t know how—Robb was just some kid—but somehow he and the rest of his boys ended up putting all these seasoned criminals and drug dealers and thugs to shame in about 30 minutes.

Arys still, to this day, doesn’t understand how it happened.

Where is he? All his friends are here—the kraken’s son, the bastard, his uncles—but he isn’t. It’s strange, but he doesn’t have much time to focus on that because Jaime’s here and he’s feeling pretty trigger happy. He’s shooting and laughing and having a grand old time—and Arys wonders briefly if he’d be as happy if Robb were here and putting him to shame once again—and Arys thinks that they might just be able to make it out of here, maybe. Hopefully.

And then there’s the slamming of car doors and Robert’s screaming bloody murder outside at, of all people, Ned Stark. He hasn’t seen Ned in years—at the meeting of sorts to find little Lyanna Stark, but that was a long, long time ago, before he met Alysanne, even—and it’s odd, to hear his voice, but he’d know it anywhere, deep and foreboding and serious. The fight spills out into the streets then as everyone rushes to defend Ned and Robert from each other.

“What are you doing here?!”

Arys is nervous—what’s going to happen now? He’s slashing blindly, worried because Jaime’s here and so is Robert and _why is Kettleblack here_? Who’s with Myrcella? He rolls his eyes, cursing under his breath. Kettleblack had one job, and that was to stay with Myrcella when Jaime and Arys couldn’t. That was literally it, and he couldn’t even do that.

And then, when Arys begins to think that it couldn’t possibly get any worse, sirens wail shrilly and police officers shoot into the air, trying to get everyone to calm down. Someone’s outside with a megaphone, but everyone inside carries on obliviously. Arys feels like he’s going to be sick.

“What in the seven hells—enough!” Jeor Mormont—police chief of the Miami Beach Police Department, also known as Old Bear—exclaims loudly, loud enough that the fighting almost automatically ceases and there’s an almost simultaneous clatter of guns, brass knuckles, knives, and other weapons hitting the ground. Seven have mercy. Everyone looks towards him, watching as the megaphone trembles in his red, meaty hand. “This is the third time I’ve had to come down here because you two insist on acting like children. It’s getting really old and I’ve just about had it with the both of you.” He glares back at both Ned and Robert sullenly. “I swear, the next time I have to come down here because of something like this, I’m haulin’ all of you in. Get out of my sight.” He waves them away. “Stark, Baratheon, c’mere,” he barks. “I’m citing both of you for disorderly conduct and inciting a riot. Be at the courthouse a week from today at nine.” Everyone stares at the trio and Jeor scowls. “Didn’t you hear me?! Beat it!”

 

+

 

“Who started this?” Ned asks, hands on his hips.

Jon Snow steps forward, trying to avoid Catelyn’s stony blue eyes. It’s no secret—she doesn’t like Jon and he understood because he was—supposedly—the product of the otherwise infallible Ned Stark’s infidelity around the time that she had Robb. It wasn’t like Jon asked to come into the world that way—or come into the world at all—but Catelyn only saw her husband’s bastard when she saw Jon Snow, nothing more. He made her blood boil, and everyone knew it—including, of course, Jon, because he knew everything. (Well, mostly.)

“Your guys were fighting Robert’s guys when I got here. I tried to split them up but it was no use. A bunch of people just jumped in until, you know, the fight got broken up,” Jon explained, wiping some of the blood off his cheeks with an old rag from his back pocket. His face feels sticky and sweaty, and he looks forward to a nice shower when he gets back home.

“Thank heavens Robb wasn’t here,” Catelyn sighs. “Haven’t you talked to him today?” Jon looks down, gnawing on his lip. He feels guilty, incredibly so when he looks at Catelyn, and he doesn’t know why, but he tries not to look at her regardless. She makes him feel jumpy.

“Yeah... well, kind of. I mean, I did see him—he was in the clearing behind the house, like past the patio, sort of. But when he saw me coming, he ran away. Maybe he just wanted to be alone. I don’t know. Either way, I just left him alone and kept on walking. I know where I’m not wanted,” he says pointedly.

“He hasn’t been himself lately,” Ned comments quietly as they pile into the car. Jory’s already in the driver’s seat. Ned and Catelyn sit together. Jory glances at Ben. The Starks are in denial about Robb and his condition. Well, mostly Ned. “He’s been sad and angry—crying, even. The kid hasn’t cried in years. He never cries.” The last time Robb cried was when his father told him he couldn’t be a septon, because no one respected a man who wore robes and crystals all day and prayed to seven statues, and that he was a Stark and that as such he had to carry on the family tradition. He was seven. He’s nineteen now. “He’s hardly ever leaves his room anymore.”

The Young Wolf—Robb—is lovesick and most people who know him are very much aware of this, but Ned and Catelyn are in denial. They don’t want to believe that Roslin really did break up with Robb and that he’s still upset about it. Robb came to Ben and told him, asked him for help, and Ben tried to help the kid—he really did, but Robb just shrugged him off and huffed away.

“He locks himself up in his room all the time,” Ned continues. “It’s so damn dark and depressing in there. I haven’t seen him eat in at least a week. I don’t know what’s wrong with the kid.”

Jon thinks back to a scene two weeks ago—Theon and the guys were going to the shooting range to practice, and Robb, who loved going to the shooting range, suddenly couldn’t fathom the thought of getting out of bed, much less going outside, where he might, perhaps, encounter her—the infamous Roslin Frey, the tiny wisp of a girl who has Robb in an emotional vice grip and refuses to let go and just let the boy breathe.

_“I’m tired,” Robb moaned, pulling his blankets over his head when Jon turned the lights on. “Shut them off.”_

_“It’s noon. It’s sunny, it’s a beautiful day, the birds are out and everyone’s gonna have a good time today—” Jon coaxed, smiling a little._

_“Except me.”_

_“Robb—”_

_“No, okay? No. I’m tired. Leave me alone.”_

_“Is this about that girl again?” Robb shot up and glared at him, eyes narrowed as he held onto his blankets tightly._

_“She’s not just some girl, okay? She’s **the** girl.” He reached out to his nightstand, where he still kept pictures of their ill-fated relationship. Roslin looked miserable in all the photographs, but Robb seemed to be having the time of his life. Jon frowns at him. His brother is such a glutton for punishment._

_“Right.” Jon rolls his eyes, leaning against the doorway with a heavy sigh._

_“Don’t right me,” Robb protests, getting up out of bed. “I’m being serious.” He looks down at the frame, sighing._

_“You’re only wrapped up in her because you couldn’t get laid—” Robb slams the picture back on the shelf, glaring at him._

_“Get out.”_

_“Robb—”_

_“Get out of my room.” He glares at Jon. When Jon refuses to move, Robb gets up out of bed and shoves him away, slamming the door in his face, locks clicking quietly._

“You really have no idea?” Jon asks. How is it that his parents don’t know? Catelyn was the one who pushed Robb into this relationship in the first place. She was so adamant on making the Frey girl a Stark, mostly because then the ever disputed twin territory would belong to them and not the Lannisters or the Baratheons. (Jon was disappointed in his step-mother.)

“He won’t tell me,” Ned said softly, glancing at his wife.

“Have you tried at all? I mean, really tried?” Jon asked. He’s given up on trying to explain it to them—they don’t get it and it seems like they’re never going to get it.

“Of course I have,” he said plainly, looking at Jon with a small scowl. “He doesn’t want to talk to anyone and he just needs a good friend, I think, but he’s too busy keeping it all inside. I don’t know. If we just knew why he was so upset we could try to help him.”

At this point, they’ve reached the Stark estate. It’s beautiful, with pretty roses and neatly trimmed grass, an artificial pond and some pretty sycamore trees in the yard. The house is white against the night sky, almost every single light turned on.

Ned grumbles something about those damn kids and bills when Jory drops them off at the front door.

They all pile into the house after him, the guys and Theon and Jon. Nymeria, Summer, Shaggydog, Lady, and Grey Wind rush to the door, licking and pawing at them happily. Arya runs downstairs and Jon can hear Septa Mordane hissing at her to get back upstairs if she knows what’s good for her. Jory takes her back upstairs, laughing as Arya pouts and protests and demands to go back downstairs.

They spend a good chunk of the evening talking about the stags and lions. They keep trying to disregard the boundary lines between their territories, and Ned has had about enough of it. Robert's men are out of control and if they don't get it together, Ned will, by force. The situation is getting out of control and Ned has had enough. They must take action, but how? This is something to discuss at the next meeting, with everyone else present so they can make an unanimous decision. The topic of discussion turns back to Robb as the sun starts peeking over the horizon, filtering into the dark living room through the sheer curtains swaying gently with the early dawn breeze. The conversation comes to a halt when they hear Robb on the steps—it’s not hard to tell who it is, with his heavy, dull, slow pace and occasional deep sigh.

“Look—here he comes. I’ll just—you know what? I’ll talk to him. Maybe he’ll finally talk to me. And if not…” Jon shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you guys.”

Robb’s closest friends are Theon and Jon, much to Catelyn’s chagrin. She wishes he would have a better taste in friends, but what can she do? Robb’s upbringing was taken out of her hands a long, long time ago. (In the middle of the night when this has reached its’ height, she’ll sit in the dark with a bottle of wine and wonder where she went wrong and blame herself for not fighting harder to keep her baby boy close to her, where she could keep him safe and sound, instead of letting Ned ruin her precious son.)

“I hope you get the truth out of him. I’m getting too old for this,” he groans. “Let’s go, Cat.”

Ned and Catelyn leave, hand in hand, and Ben and Jory wander into the kitchen to make something to eat and probably start eavesdropping on the two brothers. They’re the sneakiest people Jon knows, after all, and he doesn’t really put it past them.

“Good morning!” Jon greets cheerfully. Robb looks at him blankly, rubbing his face a little as he sits down in the love seat across from him, putting his feet up despite the fact that Catelyn would rather people keep her couches as neat and pristine as they day she got them.

“What time is it?” he groans, throwing an arm over his eyes tiredly. Robb looks like death—paler than usual and like he’s lost at least ten pounds over the last month or so (but granted he hasn’t been eating very much but it’s still jarring to see his younger brother and best friend in such a sorry state, all over some stupid girl who didn’t ever love him)—and speaks quietly. Gone is the loud, boisterous and generally wild young man Jon and everyone else knew as the Young Wolf, and in his place stands a cheap imitation, fidgety and anxious and a neurotic, shaking, weeping mess.

Jon feels terrible.

“Oh… just about six. It’s still early, Robb.”

“Oh.” Robb nods a little, as if the action is too physically demanding and he can’t bear to move a single inch. He sneezes into the crook of his skinny, pale arm, sniffling loudly. He jerks his thumb towards the stairs, frowning. “Why did they leave?”

“They’re tired. We’ve kind of been talking all night. I actually wanted to talk to you about something,” Jon begins. Robb looks at him with a mild pout, not in the mood to be lectured. Jon feels uncomfortable. He isn’t exactly a very emotional guy—growing up in the Stark household scared that right out of him—but seeing Robb like this, with no hope of him ever getting back to the way he used to be ** _(all for Roslin gods be damned Frey)_** , is more than Jon can bear. He’s not used to feeling this way and it makes him ill at ease. “What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing. It’s just—Roslin, man…” Robb groans and covers his face again, sigh partially muffled. “It’s complicated. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Are you in love?”

“No,” Robb says softly. “I was. I mean, I think I was?” he questions, frowning a little. “I love someone who doesn’t love me. Did she ever love me, Jon? Do you have any idea how pathetic that is?” Robb sits up to look at him. He props himself up on his elbows, a look of true concern etching itself onto his unusually glum face.

“I’m sorry.” Jon bites his lip and tries to think of what to say. It’s true—he is sorry, but not because Robb finally realized that Roslin Frey was incapable of ever having true feelings for anyone, ever, but rather, he’s sorry because he can’t think of anything else to say to his brother, his best friend and confidante, than a very generic and cheesy, “I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” Robb says, shaking his head. “You’ve got it all wrong. Don’t be sorry. Is it your fault? I mean, love is supposed to be blind, isn’t it? That’s what Sansa says all the time and she seems to really know all about this kind of thing. The problem is that love _isn’t_ blind—it’s manipulative and cruel and makes you do whatever it—” He sighs and rubs his eyes again, looking down at the carpet. There’s a tiny blood stain near the window and he shakes his head. There must have been another fight last night. He’s so sick and tired of fighting. He’s sick and tired of hearing about how awful the lions and stags are. He’s sick and tired of practicing and preparing for a fight that may never actually happen. He’s sick and tired, period.

“Robb?”

He wishes that he could fight for something he loved. He wants to love to hate—but how could he ever hate Roslin? Perish the thought. He wants to feel a love that really comes from nothing at all—to be happy and sad all at the same time! He props his head up again, glancing at Jon.

“Nothing’s the way it’s supposed to be and there’s no middle ground and I’m tired of trying to figure everything out. I’m just so confused and tired and sad. That’s what’s wrong with me.” Robb bites on his bottom lip harshly, staring at the ceiling resolutely, with his plump lips set in a firm line. Jon’s seen this look countless times. Robb always tries to keep everything bottled in and it’s not healthy, Jon’s told him so, but he refuses to listen to him. Jon sees the tears leaking out of Robb’s blue eyes, but Robb wipes them quickly, huffing angrily.

“It’s okay to cry, Robb,” Jon says softly. What did Roslin do to him? Jon’s never been overtly violent, especially towards women, but for a simple second it occurs to him to send a hit out on Roslin—before he realized, of course, that doing that would only lead to her death, and that would only push Robb deeper into his madness.

Robb shoots him a watery look, his eyes red and irritated.

“I just want to be left alone, okay? Go away.” When Jon makes no move to get up, Robb sighs and picks himself up. “I’m going to take a walk, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Wait! Let me come with you. I can’t leave you like this.”

Robb sighs heavily, casting his eyes down. All he wants is his peace and quiet, and his freedom, and maybe Roslin’s love wouldn’t be half bad either. Where did he go wrong? He didn’t know that it was possible to want someone too much. He assumed that Roslin was like every other girl her age and wanted someone’s unconditional affection and undivided attention every second of the day. How was he supposed to know that she was the most frigid girl who ever lived? It wasn’t like he planned to develop feelings for her, but that’s just how things happened. Despite the fact that she broke up with him quite blankly and completely ignored all his pleas and protests for them to try to work it out, he still feels an dull ache in his chest without her around.

He doesn’t know if he misses her or just having someone around to keep him company—and granted, time with her consisted of her pushing him away and him clinging closer because he didn’t know what else to do and it never really occurred to him to give her some space—and it makes him more upset than anything.

The pair walks out into the early morning pinks and purples, heading to the courtyard where Catelyn and Sansa tend to their roses in the late afternoon. Robb looks out of place in his flannel pajamas and fancy grey slippers amongst damp grass and flowers that still have some morning dew on them, but so does Jon in his still bloody t-shirt and black Levis.

“I don’t feel like myself anymore. It's like I’m someone else.” Jon makes a face as Robb sighs, blue eyes as sad as they’ve ever been. Robb tugs at a stalk of winter roses at the base of Lyanna’s statue, his father’s pathetic attempt at giving Lyanna a proper memorial after what happened with that creepy Targaryen guy. He stares at the ground blankly. Jon looks at the statue—grey marble with a crown of winter roses in the likeness of those old Greek goddesses, stoic and serene as she looked off into the distance, towards the sea. Robb keeps sniffling and Jon looks at him, losing his patience.

“Tell me the truth,” Jon says bluntly. He’s trying to help him, but it’s hard to help someone who doesn’t want your help. “Did you really ever love her?”

A smile splits Robb’s face for half a second.

“Of course I did. What’s wrong with you?” He laughs mirthlessly, shaking his head. “Why would you ask me something like that?”

“Because I don’t think you did. Not seriously, anyway. Maybe you love the idea of Roslin or what could maybe have happened had she actually had feelings for you. You didn’t love Roslin, Robb.”

“I did too. I love Roslin Frey, and you can’t stand there and tell me I don’t. You don’t know anything, Jon, and you don’t know what it’s like to finally find a girl like Roslin, only to have her tell you that you’re not good enough for her after months of giving her everything. Shut up, Jon.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“Don’t. You can stop now. She’s too good for me, apparently.”

“Could you not? Seriously. You’re a great guy and any girl would be lucky to have you. She just didn’t know what she was missing, that’s all.”

Robb rolls his eyes, shaking his head at his brother.

“You’re not getting it, Jon! She refuses to love anyone and just so damn guarded and she won’t listen to anyone talk about love. She doesn’t even like me getting her anything. She wouldn’t even let me look at her, half the time. I’m so lost without her. I don’t know what to do.”

Like mentioned previously, Robb’s always been a bit dramatic, but this is taking it to a whole other level. The girl must be special—but who is she? Just some stupid little prissy virgin girl from South Beach who took advantage of Robb and basically sucked out his soul.

“So you’re just going to cry over her forever? She’s not worth it, Robb!” Jon exclaims angrily, at his wits end with his brother.

Robb sighs, ignoring Jon’s outburst.

“I mean, maybe she’s right. Maybe we weren’t meant to be together—she says she’ll never fall in love. It’s not meant to be, but it is! I know it is. I can feel it, Jon.” He sighs heavily and Jon puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Do me a favor,” he says, sitting down with Robb on a stone bench. The soil beneath feels mushy and wet and Jon tries not to think about how it’s going to ruin his new suede boots. Damn gardeners. Robb traces the pattern of lines on his pajama pants, petulant. “Just don’t think about her anymore. She didn’t love you. She’ll never love you. Sorry to break it to you, but you need to forget about her.”

“How?” Robb asks, looking at him sadly. He must really be hung up on this girl, Jon thinks, watching as Robb’s eyes start to brim with tears again. He shuts his eyes quickly and looks down, squeezing his freckled eyelids together in an attempt to stop the tears.

(Robb Stark cries in the privacy of his own bedroom and nowhere else. He will show no weakness and no mercy because he’s the Young Wolf, the pride and joy of the Starks and every single wolf, and he doesn’t want any rumors spread about their hero—he never asked for these titles and the glory, yet here they are—being a whiny crybaby who couldn’t deal with a little rejection. Even if he couldn’t, but that was because Roslin Frey wasn’t just any girl. She could have been the girl, but it seems that possibility has flown out the window, seeing as she’s started seeing one of the gods awful Daynes, despite the fact that she told Robb when she broke up with him that she was going to be a septa and had to give up all worldly pleasures. The idea of them together makes him sick to his stomach.)

“Let your eyes wander. You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll forget all about her.”

Jon says it like it’s so easy, like it’s just as simple as snapping his fingers together and making the pain and memories go away. They were together for an entire year, and he’s just supposed to forget everything, just like that? He can’t.

“I won’t,” Robb swears. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget her. Don’t you understand? I love her. I’m in love with Roslin and I can’t stop thinking about her. I can’t. Do you think I want this? Do you think I want to feel this way? I won’t forget her, though, or what we had. I won’t. You can’t make me.”

“You haven’t even tried to move on.”

“I can’t. I don’t know how, Jon.” Robb shakes his head. "Roslin Frey is going to be the end of me," he affirms. "See if she isn’t."

“Robb, stop it already. Pretty much every girl in Miami is hotter, nicer, and just all around much more better than Roslin. In fact, I’ll find you someone better than she is.”

“You can’t.” Robb shakes his head, laughing a little. "You won’t find anyone better than her. I just know it."

“Oh, I will,” Jon vows, “or I’ll die trying.”


	3. LOST // ACT I SCENE II

Every day is full of hustle and bustle at the Baratheon estate, though today might just take the cake for the busiest day the staff has seen in a very, very long time.

Today is the day of Myrcella’s big debutante party, and everybody has more than enough on their hands.

Cersei has been more insufferable than usual lately, for starters—nothing is up to par for her anymore, and her weekly tongue lashing for her staff has now become a daily event punctuated by a slammed door and angry, measured footsteps that has everyone exchanging quiet nervous glances. And then of course, there’s Joffrey. He used to be one of Robert’s favorites and is now an unholy terror who has now taken to pouting sullenly and doing all he can to sabotage the festivities—a good old fashioned case of jealousy, a trait that’s so undeniably Lannister that it makes Robert’s skin crawl. Tommen keeps playing with those damned furballs. Renly and his ever present shadow, Loras, have permanently taken up residence in one of the loftier rooms upstairs. And, as if he doesn’t have anything else to worry about, Myrcella’s finally become a young woman and as such, has all sorts of annoying suitors buzzing about her like bees about a pretty rose on a heady spring afternoon.

Robert wants to _scream_.

Robert is sitting with one such suitor, Trystane Martell, in one of the sitting rooms, brooding as his cigarette smolders slowly between his short, stubby fingers. Trystane is one of Myrcella’s most persistent suitors as well as the cause for many sleepless nights—he just doesn’t understand what the concept of waiting is and has no problem reminding Robert that his little green-eyed, blonde haired child is now a woman (of sorts) and that he, Trystane, is the perfect candidate for a husband. Robert would rather send Myrcella to the silent sisters or somewhere far, far away, where she wouldn’t have to worry about boys or having children or anything for a very, very long time.

Trystane and Cersei have other plans, of course.

Had it not been for the fact that Trystane’s family has connections to some of the purest powder south of the border, Robert would have knocked his teeth down his throat months ago and told him to get lost. But seeing as that wouldn’t be good for business, he keeps his fists to himself and instead consoles himself with the idea that he’ll be reaping the rewards for his patience shortly. Though it does disturb him to some degree to think of his one and only daughter (that he knows of anyway) as a business transaction, he tries not to pay it too much mind.

Jaime and Selmy exchange a knowing look as Trystane fidgets in his chair, biting his thumbnail as they all wait for Robert, who has been silent for almost ten minutes—quietly and angrily brooding and sulking about his baby girl—to say something, anything.

The kid’s _weak_. He wasn’t Baratheon material. He wasn’t _strong_. What Myrcella needed was a strong, capable man to take care of her and keep her safe and free from harm. Trystane was the last person in the whole world who Robert would have ever picked for Myrcella. He was weak and flimsy and could very easily be manipulated by Cersei and his sister, Arianne, which was probably why Cersei chose him for Myrcella in the first place. His eyes were always nervous, beady little things that scurried this way and that. A boy king at best, a puppet for people to manipulate easily. How could he take care of Myrcella? He couldn’t, and probably wouldn’t, pay her much mind after they were married anyways. He’d leave her with his sister and cousins all day, and they were all crazy. Robert squints as he sips his drink, trying to keep an impassive expression on his face but struggling. It's hard to conceal his fury at this whole situation. He doesn't like it. Not one bit. Robert's had more than one run in with the Martell women over the years, and he knows for a certainty that they are all missing a couple screws. _It's always the pretty ones_.

In any event, Trystane isn’t Robert’s first pick, of course, but what Cersei wants, Cersei gets. Robert’s learned that the hard way over the years, and he’s too tired to fight with his wife these days.

(It’s an honest miracle that they haven’t killed each other yet, though they have come close to it over the years. Like the first time Cersei caught him with a girl that looked like _she who will not be named_ and almost gouged his eyes out with a Swiss army knife—she was pregnant with Joffrey and her hormones were all wacky. Well, so she claimed, but she has always kept a keen eye on him and all his doings, which is ironic because she claims not to care at all. Or like that one time where he sort of almost pushed her down the stairs in one of his angry drunken stupors and she may have bruised a rib or two. He likes to think that although there is no love lost between him and Cersei, that there is, at least, a small level of respect for each other that lets them be moderately civil in front of their children.

They loved one another once, didn't they? Once upon a time, or so Robert would like to believe. But it's been buried underneath all those crushed dreams and unmet expectations, under old yellow newspaper articles about missing lovers and dried funeral flowers, bitter shouting matches and scars of a physical and emotional type.)

Even Marillion, someone that Cersei keeps around because she likes the eye candy, is here. He's small and flimsy too, delicate and breakable. Robert sighs heavily, flicking his cigarette listlessly. He reaches out for his glass of brandy, downing the rest in one fell swoop.

“You’re really not letting this go, huh?” he asks, glancing at the wiry, tan boy blankly.

(It’s generally agreed that Robert Baratheon only drinks so as to not remember the elusive Lyanna Stark, otherwise known as _she who will not be named_ , at least not in front of Cersei, a girl who stole his heart away when he was no older than Robb or Jon or Theon, and eloped with that wretched, horrid Rhaegar Targaryen, never to be seen or heard from again. He yearns her regardless.)

“I love her,” Trystane says frankly, smiling a little. "Myrcella’s the most perfect girl in the whole world, you know. I just can’t wait anymore. I can’t. I would marry her right now if I could."

Robert makes a face, swirling his drink slowly. Jaime’s hand tightens on his belt and Arys shoots him a look. No one can really stomach the thought of Myrcella, the little girl they all raised, with some sniveling little boy sent over by the Martells, but no one says _no_ to Cersei Lannister and lives to tell the tale. No one. (The last person to say no to Cersei is now dead, poisoned at her very own hand after he ran away with the only girl in the world her husband ever loved.)

“I thought I talked to you about this already. Myrcella is too young for you, too young for any of this. She’s not even seventeen yet. Let’s just wait a while before we start thinking about a wedding. She just got her braces off last week. She’s not even done with school, for heavens’ sake. She’s a child.”

The last thing Robert needs is for his little bird to spread her wings and fly away so soon.

(Like Lyanna Stark.)

“So? Girls her age get married all the time and they’re perfectly happy.”

Robert sighs and tries to remember that punching the kid’s lights out and sending him back home in a body bag wouldn’t solve anything and would probably make things a lot worse than they already were.

“She’s just a girl. Things aren’t the way they used to be when I was your age, okay? You can’t just go off marrying people like that. But you know what? Go ahead, try to see if you can… woo her, or something,” he says, waving his hands around. He’s tired of him, and he has a feeling Myrcella is too. Maybe if she tells him to leave her alone herself, he’ll finally get the hint and leave, at least until she was of age to actually get married. At least that would buy him a few weeks time. “If she’ll have you, you’ll have my wholehearted blessing. Tonight, we’ll be throwing a party for her and I’ve invited some friends. If you’d like, I could add you to the guest list. Hm? What do you say? Maybe you two can get to know each other underneath the stars, eh?” Robert chuckles and pours himself more liquor. “Then again, there are other girls there too. You can get to know as many of them as you’d like. Maybe you’ll find someone you like more than Myrcella.” He picks himself up out of the chair, huffing and puffing. He’s getting too old for this. “Let’s take a walk.”

He turns to Marillion with a list and a map. Jaime, Arys, and Selmy follow silently, their footsteps barely audible against the marble floors.

“Make sure these people come tonight.” Marillion smiles uneasily at Robert, nodding his head as he puts the folded list in his pocket. “Well, come along Trystane!” He puts an arm around Trystane’s shoulder and they walk out of the den with a hearty, albeit very forced, laugh.

Marillion sighs heavily before walking out of the room. He almost steps on one of Tommen’s cats on his way out. The black ball of fur simply hisses at him and hops onto the stairs, staring at him as he walks out the heavy white door. The kid has too many cats and Marillion’s got a pet dander allergy, gods be damned.

He finds his scooter among the motorcycles and fancy cars of the goons that Robert insists watch his family day and night.

(Marillion doesn’t know why. It's a waste of resources and manpower. Ned Stark is many things, but he doesn’t strike Marillion as the type to put out a hit on innocent women and children. Except Cersei isn’t so innocent and her son, Joffrey, isn’t much of a child anymore, though he sure acts like it sometimes. But Myrcella and Tommen are sweet and gentle, for the most part. Ned has no real reason to dislike them so Robert’s paranoia is mostly unfounded.)

He puts on his helmet and starts the scooter, then heads for the downtown area.

The list sits heavily in his pocket.

Marillion doesn’t know his way around Miami. Having lived in Amarillo, Texas his whole life never afforded him much of an opportunity to do so, he’s afraid. And now Robert’s given him a list of people to go invite and what have you and really, Marillion would really rather not do any of it. But one simply did not say no to Robert Baratheon, or his wife, Cersei. Especially not Cersei.

He had to find someone to help him, but who? It wasn’t like he knew who these people were—his job involved helping Cersei relax and assist her with her daily tasks, meetings and interviews and everything that went into being the wife of an infamous drug dealer and mobster, not playing messenger for Robert. Marillion parks his scooter and hopes that no meter maids pass by because he doesn’t have any change and he’s not about to pay ten dollars to park his scooter in a garage. Squinting, he notes two people coming down the unusually empty street—it’s almost noon, but there really aren’t as many people as Marillion thought there would have been for some reason. Maybe they’ll help him.

He just has to do his best tourist impression. That’s easy.

A block or so away, Jon Snow and Robb Stark are having a fight, of sorts. Jon feels like he’s made moderate progress—Robb is wearing clothes and showered and shaved and looks almost human again, and he’s outside. Robb feels like crawling back underneath his covers. He wants to trade his shirt, jeans, and sneakers for slippers, his pajamas, and a blanket and he wants to be back in bed, with all his crumpled tissues and pictures and mixtapes he’d made specifically for the days where he didn’t feel like dealing with anyone or anything. He misses Roslin even more than he thought he ever could.

It’s starting to border on disgusting.

“C’mon, Robb. All you need to do is find some other girl and _bam_ —you’re good as new! This is just a phase, and before you know it, you’ll be over her and with someone who actually, you know, likes you and stuff. She’s just some stupid girl. Get over her.”

Roslin Frey is not just some girl. She’s the girl. Maybe, maybe not. And even if she isn’t, it still doesn’t change the fact that he misses her a lot. Too much. It hurts--he feels ill and uneasy and nauseated all the time, it seems. Jon doesn’t get it. No one gets it.

Robb shoots him a look, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He’s wearing sunglasses, not because it’s too bright outside—though it is a bit sunnier than he’s used to—but because Jon says he looks like he’s just risen from the dead and Robb doesn’t want people to stare at him like a sideshow freak. The fact that he’s naturally paler than most people and looks like someone tried punching both his eyes out because he hasn’t slept in two weeks doesn’t really help much either. He squints at Jon through the shaded lenses, frowning.

Jon just doesn’t get it. No one does.

“I don’t care, Jon. I just want to go home. Why are we even here? We could’ve borrowed Theon’s car or something.”

“You need to get out of the house. Doesn’t it feel nice to be outside for once?” Jon asks. Maybe he hasn’t made as much progress as he initially thought. It was a miracle he got him out of the house, bathed and dressed, without acting like he was on his deathbed.

“No. It’s too hot for this, Jon. Let’s get a cab or something.”

“No. You need the fresh air,” Jon insists, frowning.

“Right, because downtown smog is just so damn fresh.” Jon shoots him a look, rolling his eyes. “I’m not crazy, but I feel like I am. I can’t do anything anymore—” He stops short when he notices Marillion walking towards them.

None of them recognize each other because Marillion’s one of the Baratheons’ newest employees (well, really he works for Cersei, not so much for Robert), Jon doesn’t like getting involved in family affairs like the feud between both the Baratheon-Lannisters and the Starks, and Robb’s been nursing his broken heart for the last month or so he’s been kind of out of the loop as far as the family business goes.

“Are you lost or something?” Jon asks, frowning a little at the strange, odd looking man.

“Actually, I kind of am. I’m awful sorry to bother you guys, but could I trouble you to help me read this map?”

He waves the paper a little and Robb sighs, nodding. Robb looks at the map with a small frown, then looks for a street sign, trying to orient himself. Marillion starts to wonder why this stranger looks so despondent and oddly sad. He’s young—not nearly old enough to know how terrible life can truly get.

Robb makes a face. This is suspicious. Too suspicious. He glances at Jon, who shrugs. There are some Lannisters, Littlefinger’s place, the Arryns—he frowns at that one, thinking briefly of Aunt Lysa and how she basically betrayed the family—and some other families too, most of little consequence. Robb thinks nothing of it until he spotted the address in the corner of the map—the Frey estates. His blood pounds in his ears at the thought of Roslin Frey. Jon takes the map and explains how to get onto the freeway to find the homes he’s looking for. Robb is too busy thinking of Roslin—Roslin, with her almost black hair and molten chocolate eyes and red smile, with coy giggles and long eyelashes.

Roslin godsbedamned Frey.

His thoughts turn to the moment where she tore out his heart and threw it away without abandon and didn’t even kiss him goodbye.

Robb still had hope that he could fix things. Hopefully. Maybe. Probably. Probably not.

“That’s, uh, that’s a lot of people,” Robb says dumbly. “Where are they supposed to go?”

“It’s a company dinner, for work. I'm just, uh, an intern.” Marillion fixes them with an unconvincing smile.

Robb and Jon exchange a look. Does this man work for the Baratheons? Robb doubts it—he’s seedy and pasty and doesn’t seem like the fighting type—but there would be no other reason for this man to be asking for directions to these addresses. Unless, of course, Ned was planning a mass hit and hired a Faceless Man (something that Robb highly doubted, but then again it’s always the ones you least expect) who just so happened to be this man. Marillion grins at Jon and clamps a friendly arm on his shoulder.

“Thanks, man. It’s just a small get together at the Baratheon estate, down in Bel Air. You know where that is, right? You guys can come, if you want. Just tell them Marillion sent you.”

The man smiles and walks away, climbing onto a black scooter.

Jon and Robb exchange another look as Marillion puts his helmet and zips off in the direction Jon guided him in. Jon looks at Robb conspiratorially and grins, wriggling his eyebrows. Robb groans. Here it comes.

“You know… Roslin’s probably going to this ‘small get together’ tonight. You know how much she likes parties. Let’s just go and see what happens. Perhaps Roslin isn’t as beautiful as you think,” Jon suggests.

Robb shoots Jon a look as they walk to the bus stop. He leans against the pole, arms crossed over his chest angrily. They’re going to the hospital to visit Bran. He had an ‘accident’—Jon will swear with his dying breath that what happened to the boy was no mere accident but was done on purpose, at the hands of one of the Lannister dogs, no less—and neither Jon or Robb have seen him in the last few weeks. Both of their cars are in the shop and won’t be ready until later that afternoon.

“Roslin’s it for me, Jon. You don’t understand, she’s the most beautiful girl in—”

“You made that decision without a wingman—without me, okay? You couldn’t compare her to anyone else because she was the only one around who gave you the time of day, and not even that, sometimes. At the party tonight, why don’t you just try meeting other people? I bet you any money that you’ll find someone better than she is.”

Robb looks at Jon indecisively for a second and finally relents as the bus turns and makes its way down the street.

“Fine—fine, I’ll go—but only ’cause I want to see Roslin.”

Jon rolls his eyes and follows Robb onto the bus, shaking his head. It’s going to be a long night.


	4. NO CONSIDERATION // ACT I SCENE IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will you ever let me? Will you ever respect me? No!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back. Here we go.

“Myrcella!” Cersei Lannister screams shrilly, face red and mouth in a line. “Myrcella!”  
  
Cersei is out for blood today (not like she isn’t every day, but it’s more so than usual today). She doesn't have time for this fucking bullshit. She has too much shit going on and she swears to the gods above or below or wherever they are that she will have a fucking fit if Myrcella doesn't bring her skinny ass down here in the next two seconds.   
  
It’s a very busy day—there’s so much to do, so many florists to call, cooks to find, gardeners to prune flowers and maids to dust the nooks and crannies that the normal staff usually leave unattended—and Myrcella is nowhere to be found. Of course. How could Cersei expect anything less from her? Gods be damned!

"Myrcella Baratheon!" Cerati bellows, stomping her foot on the marble staircase, high end black pumps echoing in the busy foyer. The help, brainless little tits, flitter about uselessly. God, she can't take it. She's going to pick up a fucking drug habit at this rate, just to deal with all this fucking nonsense.

On the one day that she’s actually needed she decides to disappear. Typical Myrcella. Just like Robert. Sometimes Cersei wishes that Myrcella could be more like Jaime, but she can’t complain too much because it could be far worse. Myrcella could be like that little Arya Stark, brash and rude and every inch the wolf her father and uncles and brothers were. She represses a shudder as her green eyes scan the lobby angrily. Where is she?  
  
For heavens’ sake, Cersei thinks as she fumes, huffing past the girl dusting the stairs, where could she be?  
  
Cersei’s a bit of a perfectionist, maybe, but that’s just how she is now and how she’ll always be and how she’s always been. And sure, it can be slightly troubling to those who have to deal with her tenacious, quarrelsome tirades, but no one complains when everything turns out as wonderfully as they expected, if not more so.

This house would have burned to the ground long ago had it not been for the tight leash Cersei runs it on. It’s a stressful job, but she does it faithfully and keeps her composure most days, even if she is holding on by a thin, haggard thread. It isn’t for Robert, the stupid, slimy cheating bastard. Gods, she hopes he chokes soon. Not for Jaime, or her father, or the rest of family. It’s for her children—Joffrey, Mrycella, Tommen, and all those children she ’accidentally’ lost during Robert’s drunken stupors.  
  
Cersei is nothing if not selflessly dedicated to her children, however snivelling and ungrateful they may be.  
  
Today, however, Cersei is afraid she might actually snap and kill the next person who looks at her the wrong way. It would serve them right for getting in her way on such an important and serious day like today.

Tonight’s the culmination of months of planning and nitpicking—her only daughter is finally coming out into society! Finally. Tonight is the night where alliances can be made and broken and resealed and it all rests on Myrcella’s delicate little shoulders. Honestly, it's meant to be a fun, happy, and light spirited night, but she knows it'll be anything but that.

  
The tailor is here to fit Myrcella for her dress again and she is nowhere to be found. Doesn’t Myrcella know how important this evening is to Cersei?   
  
Cersei spies Septa Alysanne Royce, one of the girls from the sept downtown, coming up the steps and stands in front of her, crossing her arms over her chest. The glorified nanny is a wiry, scrawny thing, with bright red hair and watery blue eyes and pouty lips that are always coated in a demure shade of lipstain, but underneath all her modest clothing and long copper hair is a strong woman who keeps Myrcella on a tight leash (at least, she does when Cersei’s around anyway) and keeps her from doing anything too stupid. Alysanne watches over Myrcella during her lessons with Forel (because being a girl and having breasts and long legs and pretty eyes is no excuse for not knowing how to defend herself) and takes her to the chapel for confession with Septon Luwin. She, along with Arys, practically raised Myrcella.  
  
Cersei likes to think they did a pretty decent job, but moments like this make her question ever deciding to hire the septa.  
  
“Where is Myrcella?” Cersei asks, hands on her hips. They’re so behind schedule and the caterer is supposed to be here any minute and if those damn Tyrells’ don’t bring her crimson (not red, no, crimson) roses, Cersei may very well have the mental breakdown she has been keeping at bay since before Joffrey was born.  
  
Tonight is going to be perfect, see if it isn’t.  
  
“I-I thought I woke her up this morning. She was up. I think?” Septa Royce asks, looking up at her. “I swear I did. She knows better, ma’am. I’m sorry.” Her thick lips thin as she draws them into a line, looking around skittishly. The woman is always so austerely dressed—a dress that never comes above her knees, patent black leather shoes with a modest heel, and a thin seven pointed star on an even thinner gold chain—but Myrcella still seems to have taken a shine to her, despite how serious she can be sometimes.  
  
“Myrcella! Myrcella Baratheon, you get down here this instant!” Alysanne hollers, indignant as she scowls up the stairs in the direction of Myrcella's room.   
  
As if on cue, Myrcella comes barreling out of her bedroom, toothbrush in her mouth, hair a mess, and nightgown riding up her pale thighs. Her socks are mismatched, blue and pink, one fuzzy and the other one frilly, pooling near her ankles. She’s holding her retainer in her other hand. Cersei wants to sink into the floor and die, she’s so embarrassed.  
  
The girl has no sense of propriety, not like her brother, Joffrey. Joffrey would never so much as dream of embarrassing Cersei like this in front of so many people. Mycella didn’t care about apperances at all, but that was Arys’ doing. She didn’t care about anything but her books and her cassette tapes and those stupid underground concerts downtown that Myrcella thought Cersei knew nothing about. Cersei catches one of the men dusting the chandelier in the foyer eying Myrcella and practically hisses, narrowing her eyes at him. (Hear me roar, indeed.) The servants snicker under their breaths but Myrcella ignores them, cheeks flushing red. She swallows the toothpaste thickly as she walks down the stairs to greet her mother and septa.  
  
“Get down here,” Septa Royce says, quiet but harsh. She takes the toothbrush from Myrcella and shoots her a look, shaking her head as she shoves the still wet stick into one of her many pockets, making a tiny face. It’s so hard to get toothpaste stains out of these smocks, and she doesn't know if she'll have time to get these stains out before they set in.   
  
“What’s the matter?” Myrcella asks, looking at them curiously.  
  
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter. We need to talk, sweetling,” Cersei forces herself to say calmly, breathing deeply so she doesn’t snatch the girl by her hair and drag her down the rest of the steps. The septa is already walking up the steps, shooting harsh glares at the rest of the servants who are still gaping at Myrcella. Arys is in the hallway, biting his pink lip as he looks at the septa apologetically.  
  
She’s eying Arys with that look, the one that makes him feel weak and like he’s gasping even though he knows logically he’s not. They stare at each other for what feels like hours, though they both know it can’t be more than a few seconds. Cersei, as per usual, has to ruin any and every beautiful moment unwittingly, clearing her throat at the septa. Alysanne needs to talk to Arys about this - this mess with Trystane. They can't be serious. Myrcella is a baby, her baby, how could they give away her sweet summer child to a boy struggling to pass as a man?  
  
“Where are you going? You’re coming with me.” Septa Royce turns around, struggling to hide her disdain for Cersei with a pleasant smile. Her talk with Arys will have to wait, she thinks as she walks towards them, following as they walk down the steps. Arys sighs and leans against the wall because, at least for now, he’s avoided being yelled at by Alysanne. He knows that she probably doesn’t know what he’s been up to, but she probably does.  
  
She’s uncanny that way.

Cersei doesn't speak to Myrcella until they're in the study, shoulders falling slightly as she meets her green eyes.   
  
“You’re so young,” Cersei says wistfully, something like a smile on her face. "So innocent and tender."  
  
Cersei sighs, remembering the days of her youth, makeout sessions and hot summer nights with Rhaegar at the beach—before he met Lyanna bloody Stark, anyway. She sees so much of who she used to be in Myrcella, with her soft green eyes and wild blonde hair, but there’s so much of Robert’s pride and Renly’s stubborness in her that it makes Cersei’s blood simply boil. (All her hard work, turned to ashes and dust right before her eyes—why can’t she be more like her father?)  
  
Alysanne’s thoughts wander to the day when she started working for the Baratheons—both a joyous and sad occasion, but she’d rather not dwell on that. Not right now, anyway. It’s Myrcella’s big day, and the septa has every intention of making it as enjoyable and painless as possible. How can they be giving her away, selling her as though she were some child bride? Myrcella is a child. She isn't ready for a relationship, marriage, a family. Granted, there isn’t much she can do about this, but Alysanne will try her best regardless.  
  
“I’m sure she’ll be as beautiful and charming as you are when she’s all grown,” Alysanne says with a small smile, nodding. The septa and Myrcella share a knowing look. Cersei feels oddly left out and she doesn’t know why, so she cuts the moment short before she has any time to seriously reflect on it.  
  
“If only it were sooner. What a shame,” she says dismissively, shaking her head. "In any event..." She pauses, looking at Myrcella with disdain. "For heavens' sake, Myrcella! Stand up straight. Put that retainer in. Your father and I paid good money to get your teeth straightened out, young lady."  
  
Myrcella puts her retainer in awkwardly, looking at her mother and Septa Alysanne uneasily. She’s always felt awkward around Cersei, mostly because she never saw her as her mother because she wasn’t ever there and didn’t treat her with the same tenderness she treated Joffrey with. Interactions with her tended to be short, cruel, and unsatisfying. She saw her septa as her mother, kind and sweet and strong Alysanne. She was the only person who Myrcella felt really cared about her. Myrcella wishes her Jaime and Arys were here too and wonders idly if Renly’s coming to the party tonight. She hopes so. Maybe he’ll bring Loras. Loras is amusing and witty and the way he looks at Renly makes her swoon. She hopes to find someone who loves her the way they love each other—pure, whole, and unconditional, not because of money or power or dangerous white lines, but rather, because of a soul connection.   
  
Myrcella has a faint notion of what her mother wants to ask her, and what Cersei wants means that Myrcella simply won’t get the chance to have the whirlwind, passionate romance that every sixteen year old girl dreams about. Hopefully, her plans won’t go through and Robert will kick up such a fuss that Myrcella will have to pick her own husband instead of having it picked for her by someone who barely knew her.  
  
“My birthday’s only a couple of weeks away,” Myrcella mumbles, glancing at the hard marble floor beneath her feet. "It'll be here before you know it, Mother." She wishes she had thought to grab her slippers.  
  
Myrcella hadn’t meant to wake up so late, really. She set an alarm and had her clothes laid out on her desk the night before and everything. And then suddenly, the sun was streaming in through her sheer curtains and Arys was knocking on her door, telling her that her mother was looking for her and that she’d better get up quick before Cersei came barreling in.  
  
The septa simply smiles as her thoughts wander to Nymeria, little Nymeria, who would have been Myrcella’s age—but doesn’t think about her anymore than that because she was with the Mother and the Maiden and that was all that mattered. And besides, she was the one who nursed Myrcella, who bathed her, who clothed her, the one whose hands Myrcella held onto as she took her first steps. Myrcella’s first word wasn’t Momma or Daddy or anything like that. It was Aly—short for Alysanne—and the septa’s heart still swells up with pride and breaks slightly at the thought. Myrcella’s her little girl. She's hers, who were Cersei or Robert to give her away?  
  
“What are you smiling at?” Cersei asked the septa harshly, squinting angrily.   
  
“Nothing. I’m sorry.” She resumes her mask of self composure and serenity, begging the Crone to give her the strength not to put Cersei in her place because she didn’t want to be out of a job.  
  
“Don’t smile with your teeth, Alysanne. It really isn't becoming, isnt't it? Anyway, as I was saying—you’re growing up, Mycella. And that means that it might be a good idea to start thinking about your future. You need to figure out who you’re going to marry, but you’re too young. You’re just a girl and you can’t make these kinds of decisions on your own, can you? That’s why your father and I’ve decided to take it upon ourselves to make that decision for you. You’re welcome.”  
  
“Oh? Really? How lovely.” She gnaws on her bottom lip. Myrcella’s face burns as she thinks about what could happen—what will happen—and she wants to start crying and pitch a fit the way Joffrey does when he doesn’t get his way, but she knows that she can’t, because she’s held to a higher standard than Joffrey. So she just looks down and tries to breathe deeply. She doesn’t want to marry a total stranger. She wants to be romanced and wooed and loved, not sold like cattle. What if they end up giving her to someone like Joffrey?  
  
Myrcella would die.  
  
“How do you feel about being a Martell?”  
  
That’s even worse.  
  
Myrcella looks at her mother innocently as she explains her plan to marry her off to Trystane Martell, of all people. She liked Trystane—but like an older brother, not like a boyfriend or a husband. He was just her friend, barely. She couldn’t see herself with him for the rest of her life, or until he died, whichever one came first. He was too spineless and could be easily manipulated by her parents or his parents, meaning that he’d probably put her in uncomfortable situations frequently just to appease those above him. And he made her feel uncomfortable, and she didn’t like the sound of Myrcella Martell at all. M.M. She shudders at the thought.  
  
“I’ve never given it much thought, Mother. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Well,” Cersei says in a tone that leaves no room for argument, “you should thinking about that now. Here, yes, here, there are girls younger than you already planning their weddings. Walder Frey’s granddaughter Walda just married one of the Dayne boys. Did you know that? Some are already mothers. When I was your age, I was already pregnant with Joffrey.” Myrcella represses a shudder at the mention of her insufferable older brother and her mother’s golden child. “And yet—here you are, wasting away inside this house and the sept with all your books and all that nonsense. Why can’t you be like the other girls? You’ve never even had a boyfriend, Myrcella. Why can’t you be normal?”  
  
It’s not as though Myrcella hasn’t wanted to see other people or make friends—it’s just that Jaime and Arys and that awful Kettleblack watch her every move and she hardly has a moment where she can meet anyone without having one of them breathing over her shoulder. The only friends she really has are people her family feels are appropriate—her cousin Shireen, Margaery Tyrell and her cousins, and Arianne Martell. And by family, she means her guards and her septa, because if Cersei had her way, Myrcella would be knocked up and living with some creepy older guy in only the seven know where by now. She has a feeling that her only saving grace up to this point had been Arys and Septa Alysanne’s protests on her behalf, but they could only say she wasn’t ready for so long before her parents decided to get on with it anyway.  
  
“Such a pretty face—it’s not like no one notices, you know.” Cersei cups Myrcella’s soft face, rubbing a slender thumb against her cheek before letting go. Myrcella feels uncomfortable and it bothers her because she shouldn’t be uncomfortable because Cersei’s techincally her mother, but her hands aren’t the same as Alysanne’s. Her hands are cold and smooth and dry, and Alysanne’s hands are warm and tender. She tries not to frown. “Your father’s been talking to Trystane—I think he's agreed to it. Aren’t you excited?”  
  
Septa Alysanne jumps in before Myrcella can even voice her discontent with these plans. She can tell; Myrcella's eyes are glassy and she's barely making eye contact, and her small fists are balled next to her body, tight and strained.   
  
“He’s so very handsome, Myrcella. He’s a fine match for you,” Septa Alysanne adds. Myrcella swallows thickly again. “A fine match indeed."  
  
Trystane was her friend. He was one of her only friends, and she wanted it to stay that way. He just wasn’t her type and lacked any sense of romance whatsoever (or any kind of common sense), meaning that she never thought about him in that light. But Cersei had, of course, because she was an opportunist and she had to take advantage of the fact that such a powerful boy was friends with her daughter. Maybe Trystane liked her a little. She didn’t know and she didn’t care.  
  
Her mother is unbelievable.  
  
“So what do you say? You don’t even have to really like him, you know. I don’t love your father, and you know he doesn’t love me. All you have to do is pretend. I do it and I’m perfectly happy. You’ll be able to talk about it with Trystane tonight.” She smiles wistfully. “Can you imagine it? Myrcella Martell. Mrs. Trystane Martell. Doesn’t that sound beautiful?” She looks at her mother blankly, trying to find something to say. She expected Cersei to do something like this, but so soon? Myrcella isn’t as excited as Cersei orginally thought she would be, so her patience has once again worn thin and she suddenly has no time to display any sort of maternal affection. “C’mon, out with it. What do you say?”  
  
“I’d love to,” she answers quietly, voice thick. "He’s wonderful. Thank you." She has to be this pretty perfect little girl who never says no to anyone or anything and makes Cersei and Robert proud—even if that means sacrificing her own happiness or pride in the process. The septa looks at Myrcella, at the tell-tale sign in her big green eyes, and sighs. Myrcella’s going to burst into tears any second.  
  
Marillion finds them in the hallway and gives Myrcella an appraising look for a second until Cersei gets his attention, glaring at him.  
  
“The caterer is looking for you, and the florist called and said she’ll be here in about an hour. The hair dresser is in the front lobby asking for Myrcella now as well, and the kitchen staff is waiting for Septa Alysanne to help with dessert. Everything’s spiraling—excuse me, I—” Marillion yells at one of the attendants to be gentle with the crystal vases. “Everything is falling apart, Cersei.”  
  
“I’ll be right there. Thank you.” She looks at Myrcella, a simple smile that makes her shiver on her lips. “We’ll talk more about this later.”  
  
Myrcella looks at Alysanne after her mother leaves. Alysanne takes the girl by the hand into an empty sitting room. Myrcella, who is by now, a shaking, fidgety mess sits on the divan and looks down at the plush carpet, swallowing past the lump in her throat as her septa brings the two heavy wooden doors together, locking them. She draws the curtains and sits down on the plush with Myrcella, sighing heavily. Myrcella starts to cry and shake as the septa holds her, burying her face in the fabric of her sweater.

This room has been privy to many tears; to Cersei's late night weeping sessions for a love lost, to Alysanne begging for strength to resist and ignore her feelings for Arys, for Myrcella wailing quietly because she could never be as perfect as people wanted, and to sweet Tommen, who just wanted his family to be happy again.   
  
The septa sighs again and brushes Myrcella’s hair with her fingers, humming softly. The girl can’t be blamed. Perhaps she is a sentimentalist, but she’s just a little girl. And like every little girl, she had entertained notions of marrying for love—but she can’t, not anymore. Alyanne has no illusions—she knows that the Martells don’t love anyone, especially Trystane. He loved Myrcella for her name, because she was Baratheon, so what's not to love? He didn't love little Myrcella, the tenderhearted girl. It was just another attempt at expanding the already large stag and lion territory.  
  
No one cares about Myrcella and she feels like a pawn, hiccupping and sobbing. Why couldn’t Alysanne have been her mother? Sweet, gentle Alysanne, with her big smile and soft cookies with warm milk in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep, with her tight hugs and quirky advice? And why couldn’t Arys have been her father, strong, brave Arys with his dimpled grin and funny jokes? They would have never even thought of doing something like this. Her life would have been normal.  
  
“Sh, Sweetcheeks, it’s okay—it’s alright.” She wipes Myrcella’s cheek with a soft handkerchief, smiling at her a little. “It’s alright. You’ll be okay. I know you will. We’ll figure something out, you hear? You deserve to be happy, and you will be. You’ll see.” She sniffles and blinks a few times. “But for right now, let’s go find that hairdresser and get you all gussied up, okay? You have a party to throw, after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ya girl is now at seokjinniewrites @ tumblr   
> thanks for supporting me y'all, I love you


	5. ACT I, SCENE IV + V - A LIL PARTY AIN'T NEVER KILLED NOBODY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little party that starts a downward spiral

It’s the epitome of a boys’ night out.

 

Theon and Jon are in cahoots and are planning on making this one of the most epic evenings of their entire lives—assuming they leave it unscathed, of course—and Robb is quietly freaking out, like Jon expected and kind of understands. As incoherent as he’s been lately, Robb has a point, after all. It’s not like they can just _walk in_ unnoticed, so they’ve reached a slight snag in what would have been an otherwise action packed evening... until they notice the mummers and acrobats unloading their equipment outside, anyway.

 

(Of course, the Baratheon-Lannister family would spare no expense for their children, even if they’re very much debt and can’t exactly afford to be so extravagant. That’s neither here nor there, however.)

 

Theon looks at Jon with a conspiratorial grin and Robb shakes his head. Theon wriggles his eyebrows at Robb, smiling that devil’s grin that made him so inexplicably _Theon Greyjoy_.

 

“That’s the worst idea you’ve _ever_ had, Theon, and you’ve had some really shitty ideas, but this is the worst. You’ve outdone yourself. Congrats. We have to think of a better reason for being here,” Robb insists. “We can’t just _walk_ in. Don’t be stupid. Do you want to get killed?” Robb scowls, narrowing his eyes at his friends as he looks off into the distance forlornly. "This was a terrible idea. Let’s _go_ home."

 

“What? I beg to differ. This is a _great_ idea,” Theon says, shaking his head. “I’m using my noggin, unlike some people.” He taps Robb’s temple and Robb scowls at him, making a face as he shoves Theon’s hand away. “It’s foolproof. We’ll just sneak in with these people, blend in, find you a smokin’ hot babe, and leave.” He grins and Jon nods, smiling a little. “You’re welcome.”

 

If only it were that easy.

 

Despite all of Robb’s protests, it kind of is. Varys, the ringleader of the acrobats and sideshow freaks—and also the man who knows everything about everyone (or so he claims)—grabs them all and yells at them for not being ready.

 

(Much later, when all this ends, he’ll claim to have known all along that the Young Wolf was in their midst that evening, but even that’s up to speculation. If he had truly known, why didn’t he say something? He could have nipped this in the bud, stopped all the bloodshed before the first gun was even drawn. But there’s no point in musing and grumbling over what might have been.)

 

Robb assumes Varys thought they were acrobats or something. They all change into black shirts and pants and Varys gives them each a mask, telling them that they better be in the courtyard by eleven if they know what’s good for them.

 

Theon grins.

 

“Easy-peasy, lemon-squeasy loverboy,” he quips, after they’ve made it past the doors. He chucks his mask in a potted plant and grabs a glass from a passing tray. He knocks it back, wincing and shaking his head. “Woo!”

 

Leave it to Theon to be excited about crashing what’s probably the biggest party of the year where they may very well lose their lives and act like it’s no big deal. As long as he goes out swinging, what’s the big deal? Robb wants to be angry, furious, but he can’t. Roslin’s here. Maybe. Probably. Robb looks at Jon, who’s busy downing a shot of his own with a smile, winking at his brother. He sighs, taking in his surroundings glumly.

 

The lights are dimmed and there are faerie lights everywhere—it’s almost cozy but not, in a strange way. It dawns on him that this is Robert Baratheon’s home, and homes are _supposed_ to be cozy. Then again, when one is Robert Baratheon, Robb supposes nothing is truly cozy or calm. The music is loud and pulsing, someone’s yelling in the distance, and it’s just _too much._ He feels uncomfortable and he wants to go.

 

Before Robb can try to convince them that this is a bad idea, a girl with fiery red hair and a silver mask grabs Jon and tugs him away. So much for Jon. Theon smiles and looks at Robb. Robb just glares, shifting uncomfortably in his clothes. He smells so much like Old Spice it actually makes him gag a little.

 

“Let’s get you a drink and then let’s see if we can’t find you someone to dance with,” Theon suggests, grinning wildly.

 

“I’ll just, er, wait for Roslin here. Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t really feel like dancing anyway.” Theon sighs. Robb’s bleeding-heart-poetic-soft-man-boy ruse is getting really old and Theon has just about had it with him. He gave him a week to get over Roslin. Theon assumed it wouldn’t take so long—their relationship was purely physical, not to mention basically one-sided, at best, and Robb couldn’t have _really_ loved her, right?

 

Well, Theon was wrong—it’s been about a month since the break up and Robb seems to be slowly but surely losing his damn mind.

 

“No, bro. We’re getting some drinks, and then we’re dancing. Have you seen these girls? Damn.” Theon whistles at a girl with a short black dress. She blows a kiss at him. Theon tugs Robb towards the bar. The party is in full swing, it seems. Robb hopes they don’t run into any of Robert’s guys. He doesn’t want to fight, not tonight. He just wants to see Roslin. They dodge a cart with plates and glasses narrowly, leaning into the bar counter. The bar tender eyes them warily, but once Robb glowers at him, he backs off.

 

“I’m not in the mood, Theon.” Robb runs a hand through his hair, adjusting his glasses. “I just want to see Roslin and go home.”

 

“Robb—I’d never thought I’d have to say this, especially to you, of all people—but suck it up and get over it! Don’t you remember who you are?”

 

“Theon, you don’t understand—”

 

“You’re the Young Wolf!” Theon whispers harshly, shaking him. Robb frowns, making a face at his friend. “Get over it Robb! Seriously! This whole _Roslin doesn’t love me anymore and I want to die_ thing is getting annoying and really old. Don’t you think it’s getting out of hand? I love you, man, I really do, but I won’t hesitate to beat the crap out of you if I hear you say her name or bring her up again.”

 

Theon rolls his eyes again as Robb holds a hand to his chest. Roslin probably broke up with him because she was sick of his sissy poetry ridiculousness. Robb shakes his head.

 

“You don’t get it. I _loved_ her, Theon. You’ve never been in love. How would you know what this is like? You just… Love is rough and rude and stabs you right in the heart _again_ and _again_ and _again_ ,” Robb cuts in, scowling. “How can you tell me get over it if you don’t even know what I’m supposed to be getting over? Leave me _alone_. I don’t want to be here and you know I don’t. Leave me be.”

 

Theon slaps Robb harshly, frowning as he ignores the sting in his hand.

 

“Enough. Are you done?” Robb rubs his cheek sullenly, making a face at Theon. “If love wants to play dirty, you’ll have to play dirty too! If it stabs you, beat it down! It’s the name of the game, Robb. You should know that, lover boy. Where’s my mask?” He puts the blue and yellow mask over his nose and eyes, grinning. “Do whatever you want. I’m not going to stand here and watch you destroy yourself over some stupid girl, Robb. Seriously. We came here to have fun. Have fun! Here,” he says, passing Robb his mask. Robb puts his mask on slowly, frowning. He got the gaudy one with all the feathers and glitter. He glances at the glitter that’s already come off on his hands, sighing. “We’re here to have a good time, so stop trying to ruin it.”

 

It’s going to be a long night. Robb has a heavy feeling in his gut, and he can’t shake off the feeling that something is going to happen. He just doesn’t know what, not yet. Will it be bad or good? Time will tell, but he wants to leave either way. Theon’s ordering drinks by the time Jon comes back, laughing as he throws himself against the bar.

 

“I thought you would’ve found someone by now, Robb. Loosen up,” Jon coaxes, laughing. He doesn’t want to ruin Theon and Jon’s night, even if he himself isn’t having such a good one so far.

 

“I think I’ll just take a walk. Have fun without me.” He smiles faintly. “Go crazy, you guys. I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

“Can’t let you do that, Robb,” Theon says. “Let’s go! We’re burning daylight.”

 

“It’s almost dark—”

 

“I mean figuratively, Robb. Seven hells,” Theon mumbles. “Come along.”

 

“I feel like this is going to end badly,” Robb mentions as they mingle in with the party goers. “We can’t do this. We just _can’t_.”

 

“Why?” Theon asks.

 

“I dreamed about something like this.”

 

The Starks are nothing if not superstitious, Robb perhaps worst of all. They believe in omens (good and bad) and luck and fortune, things to come and things not yet seen. Maybe it’s because Ned doesn’t follow the faith of the Seven, or maybe it’s in their blood. Theon doesn’t know, but either way it gets slightly ridiculous sometimes. Robb’s his best friend, but now is not the best time for his sixth sense to be acting up. There are so many good-looking girls here and he doesn’t want to waste any time playing mystic dream interpreter with Robb.

 

“I dream too. What of it?” Theon grumbles.

 

“What was it?”

 

“Dreamers often lie,” Theon quips, rolling his eyes. "Can we go now?"

 

“They lie in bed while they dream about the _truth_.”

 

Robb believes in his dreams—always has, and there have been some pretty strange, out-of-left-field ones, but he’ll stick by them and defend them with his dying breath. Jon believes in dreams too, but not to the extent that Robb does. Theon finds it absurd. They’re grown men, for crying out loud.

 

“Jon, Robb’s acting crazy again!” Theon exclaims, glancing at Jon for help. Jon’s too busy drinking and dancing with that girl to notice. He’ll have to handle this one on his own, it seems. “Listen, for the last freaking time, dreams are nothing but that—dreams. Enough. This is getting ridiculous. I came to party, not hear you carry on like a little school girl because you had a nightmare last night. Grow up, Robb.”

 

“It wasn’t just a bad dream, Theon. I dreamed of blood, so much blood. There was blood on my hands and on Jon—it was crazy, okay? You were dead and nothing made sense and there was this girl, Theon, this beautiful girl, and I have no idea who she is, and she kept crying for me to help her, and I didn’t know what to do, and I don’t even know who she is so I don’t know how I’m supposed to help her. I feel like I should know her but I don’t and it’s weird. I have a feeling that this party is why it all happened. Everyone was crying and nothing made sense. I don’t know. I just know I have a bad, bad feeling about this. It’s gonna get dicey, Theon. Let’s just go home before something happens. Please.”

 

Theon rolls his eyes at Robb and flags down the bartender. He orders a round of beers and glances at Jon, who’s now busy making eyes at that redhead across the room.

 

“Robb, you’re acting like a baby. Grow up. You had a nightmare. Everyone has nightmares. It means you’re human. Congratulations.” He took a swig of his beer and shook his head. “We’re not leaving. Especially not you. You need to get over Roslin, okay? We’re trying to help you, but we can’t do that if you’re going to be pulling these crazy stunts. What’s the worst thing that could happen, huh?”

 

Robb shakes his head, taking a sip from his beer. He has a bad, bad feeling. It’s not going to be good. He doesn’t know why, but he can’t get that girl out of his head. She keeps crying and there’s so much blood on her hands and she keeps asking him _why_ but he doesn’t know _why_ or _who_ she is and it’s freaking him out because he’s been dreaming about her more and more often lately. He doesn’t understand it at all.

 

“I’m waiting,” Theon says, head to the side.

 

“Nothing, Theon. Nothing at all.” Robb shakes his head.

 

“Good. Let’s get this party started!” Theon yells, arms thrown over both Jon and Robb’s shoulders as he leads them to the dance floor excitedly.

 

Robb decides then and there that whatever happens at this party and after was meant to be, and if he had to leave his life in the hands of fate, then so be it. What if there was a purpose, greater than him or Jon or Theon or the rest of the party goers, behind all of this? Who was he to stand in the way?

 

It would be his very undoing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Myrcella spins around in her dress again, giggling. She’s simply in love with the dress, with its’ flowers and the fact that it actually makes her look like her chest is more than nonexistent. Even if she’s not really looking forward to the party tonight, she _is_ going to at least try to look on the bright side. It could be worse, she supposes. Trystane is kind of handsome, and at least she _knows_ who he is, and at least he’s around her age, sort of. And it’s a _party_ , for her. Granted, it’s a party celebrating the fact that she can sort of be sold to the highest bidder of sorts, but still. It’s a party all the same. Alysanne has taken enough pictures to fill an entire album—which she probably will because she has quite a bit of free time on her hands these days—and Arys had a moment of choked up fatherly pride that he dismissed with a cough into his hand. For now, she just wants to have a good time at her party and forget all about Trystane. Maybe he won’t come, and there’s no use in worrying about something that won’t even happen.

 

There’s a knock on her door and Loras pokes his head into the room, smiling brightly at her.

 

“You came!” she exclaims, hugging him tightly. She hasn’t seen him in what feels like the longest time, so she’s very glad to see him again. How long has it been? Too long. She returns his dazzling smile, smoothing down some of his curls. “I’m so happy to see you.”

 

“I figured. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. It’s your big night, Myrcella!” Loras is so very handsome, with his unruly brown hair and his pretty eyelashes and pouty pink lips. He’s smart too, which is why Renly’s so taken with him to begin with. He’s so happy with Renly that it makes her heart burst. He looks so neat and well put together in his suit and fancy blue mask. He takes it off and tosses it on her bed. He’s tan, tanner than usual. It’s probably because he was on vacation with Renly and they spent most of their time at the beach. “You look _stunning_. Those boys won’t know what hit them, I promise.”

 

“Well, I try. You really like it?” She picks up the skirt of the dress, lace and tulle and all sorts of fabrics, white and gold and glittering in the soft light coming from her ceiling fan. It has a corset in the back, tied with a very large and frilly white bow. “It’s not too much?”

 

“No, silly girl. It's great. Nothing's _too_ much for you, I think. Your mother is downstairs pitching a fit and your father is already stinking drunk. How exciting.” He wriggles his eyebrows at her as she laughs, grabbing her fan off her vanity counter. “Renly’s got a present for you downstairs. It's from Cancun.”

 

“Really?” She looks surprised, laughing. "You guys didn't have to get me anything."

 

“I know, but we wanted to. You’ve gotta actually leave your room if you wanna get it, though.” He puts on his mask and extends his arm. She giggles and snakes her hand around his elbow, resting her head on his shoulder. When they walk into the hallway, Alysanne snaps a few more pictures of them and shoos them down towards the festivities.

 

¤

 

With a grin, Robert Baratheon greets his guests, standing up and huffing slightly. (He really is getting too old for all of this partying nonsense.)

 

“Welcome, everyone! Can we have a round of applause for Myrcella, please?” She blushes as the attendees clap heartily, smiling with a polite wave and laugh she's practiced over and over in them mirror for the last three weeks. She’s the spitting image of her mother, blonde hair and green eyes—but more of a Baratheon than anything else, witty and not at all as reserved as her mother would like her to be. He grins at her. Myrcella’s his special girl, and even though this huge party put a considerable dent in an already strained budget, he didn’t mind throwing it because it meant putting a smile on her delicate little face. “Settle, settle. Who wants to dance, huh? Don’t be shy now, ladies. I suppose that there _was_ a time where I could charm a lady with my dancing moves, but that time has come and gone. Doesn’t mean I won’t try, though,” he says, wriggling his eyebrows at one of the serving girls. Cersei smiles faintly, draining her fourth glass of wine. He, of course, is talking about that gods be damned Lyanna Stark again and it makes her want to drown herself in sour, bitter wine until the sun comes up, like she normally did when she had the time to indulge. “Let’s clear these tables and let the party begin!” Robert sits down as the tables start being taken away and turns to Barristan Selmy. “Let’s sit, Selmy. We’re a little too old for this, you and I.” Barristan smiles and nods at Robert halfheartedly. “How long has it been since our last masquerade?”

 

“Oh… I don’t remember,” Selmy remarks quietly. “Seems like it _has_ been quite a while, yes.”

 

“It couldn’t have been that long,” Robert says, shaking his head. “Mace and Alerie had a masquerade when they got married, and that was—that was almost fifteen years or so ago, wasn’t it? Feels like it was just yesterday.”

 

“No, sir. Their oldest son, Willas just turned 20,” Selmy counters. “It was about 21 years ago.”

 

“What? No kidding, huh?” Robert huffs. “I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.”

 

While Robert and Barristan argue about the passage of time, Robb has convinced himself that this whole party was fate. It _had_ to be, it just _had_ to. Things work mysteriously - Robb's no stranger to the mystic and interesting workings of the universe, but he's never seen whatever divine power governs his life impact it directly until right this very second.

 

She’s _here_ , his _literal dreamgirl_ , except she’s not bleeding or crying, but laughing and yelling and having what seems like the time of her life. Her grin is happy and wide, face flushed as she spins and twirls and jumps and laughs. How can it be? The girl—Myrcella Baratheon—may very well give Roslin a run for her money in the looks department. She's actually quite beautiful, and that's just from across the room.

 

For once in what feels like a very long time, maybe not forever but close enough, Robb finds himself not thinking about Roslin as much as he used to. He hasn’t seen nor hide or hair of her, but it’s okay. Maybe she didn’t come.

 

In any event, he’s too busy watching Myrcella have a good time to bother looking for Roslin anyway. ( _Myrcella._ ) He’s in a corner, nursing a drink that’s a little stronger than he’s used to, watching her intently. It can't be, but it _is_. Is this a joke or some sort of karmic gift he's earned for his weeks of sadness? He isn't sure, and to be honest, at the moment he doesn't particularly care _why_ they're both here. He just cares about _her_ , odd as it may seem. She smiles and giggles, spinning in the arms of a tall man that he thinks might be a Tyrell—the curls give him away—whispering something in his ear. Her mask isn’t really much of a mask—it just covers her eyes and the bridge of her nose, white and glittering gold and silver, and that _dress_. He can’t help but follow her wherever she goes, she’s so bright, like a star that somehow crashed and now dazzles everyone in her midst with how bright and radiant she is.

 

He’d convinced himself that he’d never find someone like Roslin—that there wasn’t any hope and that he would be better off if he just gave up and spent the rest of his days brooding and alone. And then... then he sees _her_ and it all changes. It all just _leaves_. She looks at him briefly, once, before the man spun her to another corner of the room, swaying slowly with whoever the man is. His mouth goes dry as he struggles to formulate a single thought that doesn't somehow involve Myrcella Baratheon.

 

Myrcella was beautiful, and that was just from across the room. Robb has to get closer, he just _has_ to. Robb sets his empty glass on the counter and thanks the bartender. Then, he turns and leans against the bar, watching her silently as she moves from dance partner to dance partner. She dances with pretty much every one but Trystane Martell, who she makes it a point to avoid and almost ignore. Hm. It's curious, but not too much cause for concern at the moment.

 

Robb’s hands start to sweat as he wipes them against his pants. Why was he so nervous all of a sudden? Roslin never made him feel like that, and they were together for a whole year. He’s never questioned his love for her, at least, not until he saw Myrcella. Did he ever love Roslin? Maybe Jon and Theon were right. Maybe he’s just been fooling himself this whole time and maybe he’s never felt anything close to true love until this very night. He’s never been much of a believer in love at first sight, seeing as it’s too ridiculous for even him, but maybe there’s something to the idea after all. Maybe one can really fall in love with someone within moments of seeing them for the first time.

 

(He thinks, passingly of what his father said when he asked him about what true love was. Ned simply smiled and glanced at his son and told him that when he saw her, he'd just _know_ , told him how when he first met Cat he actually couldn't sleep for two days because he couldn't stop thinking about how _blue_ her eyes were. Is _this_ what his father meant? This gut-wrenching euphoric feeling of happiness that threatened to tear him to bits if she didn't return his affections? Was this _love_ , or something like it?)

 

His attentions do not go unnoticed.

 

Jaime Lannister eyes him sullenly, mouth in a thin line as he turns to Robert, who is well in his cups at this point and couldn’t really care less that a _wolf_ , of all people, is at Myrcella’s party. Granted, the boy looks more Tully than anything else, but he’s Stark through and through. Who did he think he was fooling? Jaime could have spotted him a mile away.

 

“Look over there,” Jaime whispers in Robert’s ear. “Look.” His hand goes instinctively to his belt, feeling the press of metal against his shirt. “How dare he? How did he even get in?”

 

“What are you going on about?” Robert asks, looking over at him, nonplussed.

 

“Robert—he’s a Stark. Last time I checked, they kind of specialized in ruining parties like this.” Robert squints and laughs a little, slapping a hand over his rumbling belly.

 

“Is that Ned’s boy?”

 

“That’s him, alright,” Jaime grumbles.

 

“Easy, Jaime. Let him be. He’s not looking for trouble. If he was, he would have done something by now, don’t you think? I mean, from what I hear, he seems to be a nice kid. It's just a party. A little party never killed anyone. I won’t have you doin’ anything to him. Just relax, okay? Try to have a nice time for Myrcella’s sake.”

 

“We can’t just let him—”

 

“Oh, but you _will_ ,” Robert says, face darkening. “What? Who calls the shots here, hm? You wanna start somethin’ here at Sweetcheeks’ party? I dare you. I wish you would. Give me a reason, Jaime, give me a single rea—”

 

“He’s disrespecting—”

 

“Go on, get! Don’t test me,” he warns, narrowing his eyes at him. “Arys looks out for her just fine.”

 

Jaime scowls and storms away, shaking his head. Robb must think he’s so slick and like he’s getting away with something, and maybe he is, but not for long.

 

¤

 

“May I have this dance?” Myrcella looks away from Renly, whose face falls when he sees Robb—it’s his eyes that give him away, Tully blue and as bright as can be, that smattering of freckles that's so distinctly _Stark_ , and that grin, that wolfish, horrifying grin. He doesn’t say anything—can’t—and instead excuses himself, looking for Loras. (They spend the night discussing what Robb crashing the party means and arguing back and forth about whether or not they should say anything or not.) Her eyes are green and friendly as she smiles at him and places her delicate hand in his. “I’m sorry,” he says softly in her ear, keeping his steps light and smooth.

 

(His mother taught him to dance when he was little, tracing her footsteps all around the veranda as a quiet waltz played. At the time, it embarrassed him because Jon didn't have to and neither did Theon, and all his friends made fun of him once they found out that he spent every Wednesday afternoon from three to five learning what the difference between a waltz and a foxtrot was. Now, however, it seems that those lessons have finally served their purpose.)

 

“For what?” Myrcella asks, pleasantly surprised as she looks at him curiously.

 

“I’ve spent the whole night staring at you.” Robb tells her the truth—he can’t help it, it just pours out of him, how beautiful he thinks she is and how he couldn’t help but to ask her to dance because he just wanted to see her properly, and then he asks her to step outside for a minute, _please_ , so they can talk.

 

(He's mad, this whole idea is stark raving mad, but he's come to the conclusion that he doesn't care, he can't, not when she smiles impishly at him and squeezes his hand.)

 

Myrcella says nothing as she sneaks him out through one of the side doors, leading him to the garden outside. The air is crisp and cool for a summer evening. He takes off his mask as they make their way to one of Robert’s shallow fountains, sitting on the outer marble lip. It’s dark, but she can still see who she is. He doesn’t seem nearly as ferocious as all the rumors make him seem as some of his hair falls into his face when he reaches to touch the water. He even smiles, a little.

 

Who knew that this... man-boy who everyone feared, this wolf in sheep's clothing, could actually seem so... well, _human_? Ordinary, even?

 

The only reason she even managed to sneak out in the first place was because Arys was finally trying to put a move on Alysanne—he had feelings for her for as long as Myrcella could remember but could never really get through to Alysanne—and wasn’t paying attention to Myrcella, for once. Jaime had disappeared somewhere near the bar, and Hound and Kettleblack were tending to Joffrey and Tommen for the evening. Myrcella was finally _alone_ , a feeling she typically relished and treasured, but it was now something that made her feel unsafe, but in a good way. A dangerous and exciting kind of unsafe, the kind that made her heart catch in her throat and hands feel clammy.

 

Myrcella gnaws on her bottom lip as _he_ toys with the mask in his hand, deciding that if they hadn’t been caught by then, it probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. They have five, maybe ten minutes tops, before she has to get back to the party. Her hand rests on the edge of the pool, gripping the marble with thin fingers. Robb rests his hand on top of hers, sighing quietly.

 

“I know you,” she blurts out, looking at him shyly. “I’ve heard all about you. I _know_ who you are. _What_ you are.”

 

“Yeah?” She nods and he smiles. Robb honestly doubts that she knows anything about him at all, considering that they just met a few minutes ago, but he could be mistaken. People talk, after all, and it wouldn't surprise him if maybe Robert or Jaime or even Arys, who he spotted in a dark corner before he made his way to Myrcella, brought their 'work' home. Maybe she had heard bits and pieces. “Who am I?”

 

“They call you the _Young Wolf_.” Her green eyes glitter as she continues, not missing a beat. “My father hates you. Jaime hates you. Arys hates you. None of them can even stand hearing about you. Everyone says you just won’t die. Is that true?”

 

It is true. Kind of. He can die like anyone else, he just hasn’t met anyone who could actually pull off killing him. He was human - an ordinary simple human being with extraordinary good luck. That wasn’t his fault. Lots of people hate Robb, but lots of people like him too. He’s so used to it that at this point, although he is kind of surprised, her words don’t necessarily faze him. Robb would expect her father and uncle and constant shadow of sorts to hate him. It was kind of their job, after all. He expected no less. He shrugs and smiles, looking at the pool before glancing at her. There were pennies and dimes and nickels glimmering underneath, all the way at the bottom, and it makes him wonder who’s been wishing here lately, and what they've been wishing for.

 

“If you know who I am, why are you here?” Robb asks.

 

Her hands are softer than they have any right to be and her hair is just so long and her lips—

 

“I could ask you the same thing.” She thumbs the crystal on her chain, glancing at him. He's dangerous. She _knows_ he is. Why is she here? Why isn't she _screaming_ bloody murder at the top of her lungs? Why is she letting him touch her?

 

(It was a gift from Arys, something he picked up on his last trip abroad with Jaime and Hound.)

 

It's not like Myrcella was stupid. She could tell who he was right away. If it weren’t for his hair—Tully red mixed with some of his father's brown strands—it’d be his eyes—Tully blue and bright and vibrant, like the ocean on a sunny day. And his friends—the sullen dark haired one and the somewhat loud blonde one—gave him away too. The bastard and the kraken—it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together and figure out that Robb Stark— _the one and only Young Wolf_ —had snuck into her party. But why? What could he possibly gain from coming to a teenage girl's coming-of-age party?

 

“Why are you here?” Myrcella asks, looking at him curiously.

 

It doesn’t make any sense. If he wanted to do something, hurt her or her family or something he would have done it by now and he hasn’t. And if he's done anything, it must have been something quite small because she hasn’t heard anything about it and she hears everything.

 

“I don’t know,” he answers. He was supposed to be getting over Roslin, but he hasn’t even seen her or paid her much mind after seeing Myrcella, who fit with him better than Roslin could ever hope to and who smelled like lavender and roses and something heady where Roslin always smelled too sweet for comfort. “Do I make you nervous?”

 

“Do I make you nervous?” she counters, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Does this bother you?” He looks down at their hands. Pale on top of freckled, rough on smooth. “If it does, my two lips stand here like two blushing pilgrims, ready to make it all better with a kiss.”

 

Myrcella blushes and smiles a little, looking at him wryly.

 

“I think you’re just being nice. I mean, pilgrims touch the hands of saints all the time. Holding hands is kind of like a kiss, then, isn’t it?”

 

_(Myrcella the Maiden, patron saint of love and beauty (she has to be, with the blonde hair and freckles and those green eyes). He’s seen it in his dreams, a marble statue as pure and dainty and holy in her likeness in a courtyard of daisies and honeysuckle, a crown of roses on her head. People coming from all over to leave flowers at her feet, light candles, pray to her, for her, about her.)_

 

“But don’t pilgrims and saints have lips too?”

 

“Yes—but they pray with them, unlike you.”

 

She looks at the pool and tries to ignore the playful smirk on his lips. This boy will be the end of her, she can feel it in her _bones_. In her very essence, in her _soul_ , she can feel it. Does she mind? She should, but she doesn't, not particularly. She shouldn’t be here, not with him—she should be inside with Trys, trying hard to make him like her so her parents (Cersei) are proud of her, she should be laughing with Alysanne and trying to push her into Arys’s waiting arms. She shouldn’t be out here with this boy—but he doesn’t seem like much of a boy, not really, not with that smile and the faint hint of stubble or that laugh—no.

 

Myrcella Baratheon should not be out here with Robb Stark— _the_ Robb Stark—but she is and she feels positively wicked.

 

“Then let’s let lips do what hands do all the time. Won’t you give me a kiss, just a little one? If you do, I’ll never ask you for anything again, I promise.”

 

She gnaws on the inside of her cheek.

 

This boy—no, no, man, Robb Stark is a man, more of a man than Trystane could ever aspire to be, a man like Arys Oakheart or her uncle Jaime—is too perfect for her own good. He's _strong_ and manly and proud—everything she wanted and everything Trystane wasn't.

 

“Saints can’t move, you know. Even when they’re granting prayers.”

 

“Then don’t move,” he murmurs.

 

And then he kisses her, and it’s soft and his lips are a lot softer than she would have thought they were and he doesn’t have any right and by rights she should be pushing him away and start screaming for help—Arys and Jaime would be out here in a heartbeat and would drag him away and she’d never have to see him again (but the thought disquiets her so much that she kisses him back, fervent and wanton and if Cersei could see her now)—

 

She pulls away and looks at him, biting harshly on her inner cheek.

 

“Now you’re just as unholy as I am,” he murmurs, smiling.

 

Myrcella should have known this boy was trouble. She should have left, should have fled, run away, left him there, told everyone who he was and what he was doing—what he'd done. Instead, she just kisses him again, and she really shouldn’t like his stubble but she does—she really, really does—and he smells like everything wonderful, like home and soap and peppermints and just a little bit like chocolate and she knocks him into the fountain in her haste, arms swinging around his shoulders and his hands are warm, so, so warm even though the water is freezing and his hair is really soft and horribly curly and it makes her smile. She doesn’t care that this is wrong or improper and that at confession she’ll be as red as can be and will have to pray with Septon Luwin—no, because this is just _too_ good and she won’t feel _bad_ for feeling _good_.

 

“You’re really good at that,” she says softly, corners of her mouth quirking up at how messy he looks.

 

And then, out of nowhere, Alysanne is standing at the edge of the fountain, looking down at the both of them disdainfully, making a face. She clears her throat and Myrcella blushes deeper than before, looking down. Oh _no_.

 

“Your mother’s looking for you, Myrcella. You should really get inside, don’t you think?” She scrambles to get up and hurries away, disappearing around the corner. She doesn’t even say goodbye.

 

Robb looks away from her to look at the woman, who returns his curious glance with her hands on her hips as he picks himself up out of the fountain.

 

“Who’s her mother?”

 

“Cersei Lannister.” His face blanches slightly as he remembers her previous words—my father hates you—and it dawns on him that she was Myrcella Baratheon, daughter of the man who would honestly like nothing more than to see him and his family in pine boxes six feet underground. This is not good. “She’s engaged to Trystane Martell. I mean, it’s not official yet, but she is. We’re just going to pretend this never happened. Do I make myself clear, young man? You’re going to leave her alone. No phone calls, letters, random visits— _nothing._ May the Seven help you if I catch you near her again. Am I making myself clear”

 

She says it in a way that leaves no room for argument. Robb nods thickly, sighing. _Trystane Martell. Myrcella Baratheon. Myrcella Martell._ She looks at him haughtily before walking back inside, leaving him behind. She can’t be a Baratheon. She just can’t be, Robb thinks. He doesn’t have much time to panic, though, because soon Jon and Theon are running towards him, tossing their masks in one of the bushes. Jon looks at him curiously but says nothing.

 

“We should probably go. Like, now, because the acrobat thing is about to start and last time I checked you’re not all too flexible and neither am I,” he says, tugging Robb away.

 

Robb looks back at the house and sees Myrcella in a window, talking to the woman who came and took her inside. Myrcella looks at him briefly and he smiles. She smiles and waves goodbye at him before the woman steps in front of her and draws the curtains shut. Robb sighs heavily.

 

In the sitting room, Myrcella and Alysanne wait for the partygoers to leave, mostly because Myrcella is hiding from Cersei because she has no real way to explain why she’s soaked to the skin without telling her the truth. Alysanne brought Myrcella some dry clothes and found a maid to take the sopping wet dress away. Myrcella touches her lips and the septa paces. She can’t stop thinking about that kiss—and how many other ways she’d like to kiss him—and she’s unsettled. Did he get out okay? What if Arys found him? Or worse, what if Jaime got ahold of him? She gnaws on her bottom lip, still tender from the romp in the garden.

 

“You know very well who that is, don’t you? That’s Robb Stark. They call him the Young Wolf for a _reason_ ,” she hisses faintly. Myrcella looks down at her lap and bites her lip. It figures that she finally meets someone that she really, really likes and he’s the son of the one man she’s supposed to hate with every fiber of her being. “What?” Septa Alysanne asks, scowling slightly. “I won’t tell your mother, but you can’t be doing things like that, not if you want this thing with Trystane to work out. You need to be more careful. What if someone else had seen you?”

 

“I’m sorry,” she says faintly, except she’s not, and the only thing she’s sorry about is not being able to spend more time with Robb Stark.


	6. ACT I, PROLOGUE + SCENE I // SHIMMER

  
  
Myrcella was just a girl—just a tiny wisp of a girl—and no matter how many fights Robb won, he was just a kid too. They were just _kids_ , Jon muses sadly, nursing his drink. It seems as though the more Robb got over Roslin, the deeper in love he fell with Myrcella. Robb would have done nearly anything for Roslin, Jon doesn’t doubt it, but he would have died for Myrcella, and at the end of the day, that’s exactly what he did.  
  
Their love gave them power, but time and fate gave them chance opportunities to meet here and there—and maybe, Jon muses, it was the thrill of the dangerous situation they found themselves in that made it so sweet for them.  


 

 

 

 

 

  
  
Myrcella called Robb the night after the party (a plan that involved a lot of precision, planning, and lying, things that were never truly her strong suit) and they spoke for about fifteen minutes before Sansa picked up and yelled at him for tying up the phone for so long. She was expecting a phone call from Willas and if the phone was busy he obviously wasn’t going to get through. Duh.  
  
She scowls at him from her post on the stool next to the black phone in the hallway. Her red hair is in curlers, a purple mask on her face. Her night shirt hangs off her shoulders loosely as she leans against the wall. Sansa's fingers curl around the black wire, smiling. For the moment, Robb is forgotten, and so he slips into his room and leans against the door.  
  
Robb fears he may very well be at the mercy of a teenage girl, and for once, he doesn’t think it’s Sansa.  
  
¤  
  
It’s been about two weeks since Robb’s seen Myrcella at her party and he’s on the verge of going crazy. How can this be? How can any of this be? He spends his nights in a cold sweat because of the way she smiles and the way the sunlight hits her hair dancing behind his eyelids, teasing and tantalizing him. It makes him feel warm, wistful and nostalgic, even if he can’t really sleep. But then there are other dreams, where she’s crying and begging him to come home (please) and he doesn’t understand why or how but it keeps him up nonetheless.  
  
He can’t shake the feeling that something bad is going to happen, but he shoos those thoughts away with the thoughts of her lips on his, soft and wet and plush with the lightest hint of strawberries and cream.  
  
¤  
  
One balmy Friday afternoon, Arys tosses a thick envelope stuffed thick with sweet nothings from “A Secret Admirer” on Myrcella’s desk and asks her not to ask anything so reckless and foolhardy of him ever again. Robb gave it to Jon on a rainy Monday night, Jon met up with Arys the following day at a nondescript cafe two miles outside of Miami and handed it over, and Arys spent the following few days debating whether or not to give it to her before he decided that she’d find out if he had it so he might as well have.  
  
Myrcella falls onto her bed on her back with a smile, holding the small package to her chest gleefully. She whispers a soft thank you to Arys, giggling. He can't exactly recall ever seeing her so giddy or excited about much of anything, really, but it's nice all the same. He watches Myrcella for a moment before walking out of the room, shutting the door. Her happiness is bordering infectious.  
  
¤  
  
Robb sends Myrcella white and pink peonies—her favorites—under Trystane’s name. She knows that they have to be from Robb because she recognizes his handwriting, sloppy and loopy and formless. Trys would never send her flowers because he has a really bad pollen allergy and didn’t have a single romantic bone in his body, meaning that they have to be from Robb. Septa Alysanne manages to convince Cersei that they’re just from some septas downtown, meant to thank Myrcella for her acts of mercy and kindness over the last few weeks. Robb also sends her chocolates and hides love letters underneath the plastic tray inside the heart shaped cardboard box. She sends him replies with Arys, who gives them to Theon, who shows up at Robb’s bedroom door and reads them in a high-pitched voice and doesn’t let him live it down for the rest of the week.  
  
¤  
  
Robb feels his face burning as he holds the phone to his ear, a soft smile on his face. He hasn't had the time to be able to see Myrcella as much as he would like to, lately, with all that's been going on. Still, they've managed to stay in touch, which is something he's truly thankful for. She sounds sleepy and soft, tone gentle. It's soothing.  
  
¤  
  
“What do you think you’re doing?” Septa Alysanne asks. Myrcella is sitting at her vanity counter, spraying another love letter with perfume. She's not in love, she knows logically she can't possibly love him (someone as wild and untamed as Robb could never truly be loved, just appreciated, wanted, cared for, coveted) but she still feels something sweet and tender blossoming in her chest whenever she thinks of him. She folds it and shoves it in a peach colored envelope—Myrcella has her own set of stationary and stamps because she likes writing letters, mostly to Renly and Jaime when they’re out of town—signing her name on the front of it quickly. Alysanne shuts the door gently, leaning against it. Myrcella smiles and presses a kiss to the envelope, sealing it shut with a bright pink lip print. “Myrcella?”  
  
“What?” Myrcella looks at Alysanne innocently. “Did you need something?”  
  
“We need to talk.”  
  
“Okay.” She smiles and the septa sits down on her bed, patting the soft white comforters. Myrcella sits next to her, still smiling. “What’s going on?”  
  
“What are you doing, exactly? I mean, with that—” She pauses, glancing at her folded hands. “That Stark boy,” she whispers, looking at Myrcella wide-eyed. “What are you doing?”  
  
“Nothing. We’re just friends, Alysanne.”  
  
“Who write love letters to each other?” Alysanne shoots her a look, raising an eyebrow. “What are you going to do when your mother finds out? Or your father? Or, heavens forbid, Trystane or Jaime? What are you going to do then?”  
  
“They won’t.” Myrcella looks at her septa, almost pleading. “You can’t tell them. You just can't—”  
  
“I won’t. But what’s to say that Arys won’t let it slip one day to Jaime? You know he can’t keep a secret and if Jaime finds out, you know what’ll happen. Or, what if Kettleblack sees you two together? What if Joffrey—”  
  
“Stop.” Myrcella looks at her lap and sighs, pushing her hair behind her ear. “No one’s going to find out because no one is going to say anything. It’s not like we’re not being careful. I’m allowed to have friends, aren’t I? I can talk to other people and be around someone who cares about me, can’t I? I mean—”  
  
“What about Trystane?” Alysanne asks, tilting her head to the side.  
  
“What about Trystane? He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t love me, he—”  
  
“And that-that boy loves you?” Alysanne crosses her arms over her chest, sighing as she struggles to keep her composure. “You’re too young to be in love, or to be thinking about love, or anything like that. That boy is going to get you hurt, do you understand me?”  
  
“No, he’s not. He takes care of me because he cares about me. He doesn’t care about impressing Mother and Father or making Jaime like him. Trystane doesn’t want me the way Robb does.”  
  
“The Starks are sneaky, Myrcella. How do you know he’s not doing this to hurt you or your family? You can't ever tell what they're up to. That's why they're so dangerous, sweetling.”  
  
“Because I do. He wouldn’t do that.” She shakes her head, frowning. “He’s not that kind of guy, Alysanne. He's not. He's different. I can feel it.”  
  
“It’s always the ones you least expect, Myrcella. I’m trying to help you.”  
  
“You said I deserved to be happy, didn't you? He makes me happy. You can’t change that and neither can Arys or Jaime or anyone else.” She turns away from her, standing up. Myrcella shakes her head as she faces her balcony, the open doors letting in some fresh, balmy air. "He's the one that makes me happy and really cares about me. Not Trystane. Trystane couldn't love me even if he wanted to, Alysanne, and you and I both know that. Don't I at least deserve some modicum of happiness?"  
  
“Myrcella—”  
  
“I’d like you to leave, if you don’t mind. Is Arys home?” Alysanne sighs, standing up as she watches Myrcella's shoulders tremble.  
  
“Yes. I’ll tell him to come up. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to. I’m just—”  
  
“Please leave,” she says stoically. Alysanne walks to the door and looks back at Myrcella, who’s now staring at the wall, stone-faced, lips in a line. Myrcella looks exactly like Cersei when she had her, green eyes blank, nose coming to an end in a thin point, pink lips and high cheekbones, face devoid of any emotion. She’s going to start crying again, of course. That’s the only thing she does when she’s home these days. She only hopes that Myrcella won’t end up like her mother, bitter and used, but she can’t shake the feeling that something much worse is in store for her, and it’ll all be at the hands of that wretched Stark boy.  
  
¤  
  
This afternoon is one of their first afternoons together, and since Myrcella doesn't know how many more times they'll get to be this close, she plans on making permanent memories to keep close to her heart when he's not around.  
  
“Smile!” Myrcella exclaims. Somehow, she managed to borrow a Polaroid from her school’s film department, and has spent the entire afternoon snapping pictures of everything. It’s almost endearing, how she squints her other eye and parts her mouth slightly as she tries taking pictures of him. “Robb!”  
  
He covers his face with his left hand and Myrcella frowns, making a face at him.  
  
“C’mon! I don’t have any pictures of you,” she pleads, kneeling in her seat. Robb glances at her. It's unsafe, really, and he worries, but she looks so endearing when she's pouting that he can't really tell her to sit properly and put her seatbelt on before a cop catches them and gives him a ticket.  
  
“I don’t have any pictures of you either,” he laughs, shaking his head. “And I’m driving, so if you don’t mind—” Myrcella sighs petulantly, brushing her hair over her shoulder.  
  
Robb picked her up from school today because she managed to sneak away from Arys for five minutes to meet up with Robb three blocks away for an afternoon of good old fashioned teenage debauchery. She takes off her sweater and tugs on her blouse a little, tossing her tie in the back seat. Robb shoots her a curious glance before focusing back on the road. She gives the camera a cheeky grin as she points it towards herself and takes a picture. She shakes it out and even signs the white part with a pen she finds rolling around the floor—For Robb, from Cella—before shoving it at him. He laughs and puts it in the visor before folding it shut, shaking his head.  
  
“It’s your turn!” she exclaims, grinning at him as her pale cheeks stretch, white teeth gleaming.  
  
“I’m not photogenic.” Myrcella rolls her eyes, scoffing at him. “Really! I mean, have you seen our Christmas card? It’s actually kind of painful,” he laughs.  
  
“Stop exaggerating.” She wrinkles her nose at him. “Smile, stupid.” He makes a face and she scowls at him. “Robb! C’mon. Please? For me?” The car rolls to a stop on the congested freeway and he sighs heavily before smiling awkwardly—it's not that he doesn't want to smile, he's just not used to having an occasion to smile, or someone who makes him as infuriatingly happy as Myrcella does.  
  
¤  
  
Myrcella Baratheon has been specializing in small acts of rebellion that have all lead to this very crucial moment underneath the boardwalk, where she realizes that Robb Stark will be the very death of her and she doesn’t entirely mind the prospect.  
  
Act one: she has Arys make a false bottom on one of her desk drawers to hide Robb’s letters and tokens of affection, dried flowers and old chocolate boxes and the small cards that accompany her flowers. It's important that she hide any and all traces of Robb in her life from her mother, seeing as her mother will make absolutely positively sure she doesn't see or hear from him ever again if she finds out, and Myrcella simply can't have that.  
  
Act two: during study hall a few days later, she leaves Arianne to sit with Margaery and Sansa, sparking a cacophony of hushed whispers because Myrcella never ever left Arianne’s side in school, like ever. She covers it up by saying that she simply enjoys Sansa's company, that she's smart and quiet and helps her conjugate Spanish verbs for her homework. It's mostly believable. Sort of.  
  
Act three: when she’s at the sept that's typically frequented by the rich and famous, while she’s supposed to be praying for the Maiden to help her be as pure and holy as everyone believes her to be, she sneaks out to meet Robb in one of the gardens and partakes in some rather unholy acts behind a rose bush that leave her dizzy and starry-eyed.  
  
The fourth act, however, is perhaps her most daring attempt at breaking her bonds yet. She lies to both Alysanne and Arys, to their faces, no less; sneaks out of her house while both Jaime and Kettleblack were still home; and meets up with Robb for a midnight rendezvous to the beach where she finds herself now, rolling around on the sand with him. Margaery Tyrell (Loras' sister), of all people, is her accomplice. She’s spending the night because she’s one of the girls that Cersei is trying to set up with Joffrey and she wants to keep as close an eye on her as possible—keep your friends close and your enemies closer, after all. Myrcella manages to convince Margaery to sleep in her bed and pretend to be her for the night.  
  
(Margaery is under the impression that Myrcella is going to an underground rock show at one of her favorite cafes, not that she's going to the beach where she's going to lose yet another shred of her already flimsy innocence to one of the most dangerous boys in the whole city.)  
  
Then, she tells Alysanne that there’s a meteor shower that she wants to watch on the roof and that she’ll be fine because Arys and Margaery will be with her. Myrcella tells Arys that she’s having a girls’ night with Margaery, meaning that he shouldn’t go into her room at all, not even to say good night. After that, it was only a matter of not getting caught.  
  
The beach is pretty empty, the tide is pretty slow, and it’s balmy outside, the air sticking and pressing to them delicately. The stars are bright and radiant against the night sky, and Robb—  
  
“Stop,” she laughs, wriggling underneath his hands, wandering fingers making her laugh until she feels like her ribs might burst.

“Make me,” he says, kissing her all over—face, lips, cheeks, neck, eyebrows, hairline, ears, eyelids. His kisses are always soft and sweet and tender. The way he holds her, reverent. His hands are slightly rough and calloused, scarred, but still soft and take her apart with as much delicacy as he can muster.  
  
Myrcella feels dizzy with happiness and joy, struggling to catch her breath because she's laughing too hard. When was the last time she was this happy? When? He’s ticking her and Myrcella is very, very ticklish, but that isn’t why he’ll be the death of her. The way his hair falls into his eyes has nothing to do with it either and neither does how his shirts always fit him so well and no, it isn’t even remotely related to the fact that she happens to really like how he smells (like Old Spice but not like Old Spice because Arys smells like Old Spice because he practically bathes in it—because Septa Alysanne bought him a bottle of it last year and now he wears it all the time because he’s so very much in love with her and she doesn’t even know—so Myrcella knows what it is and Robb isn’t it, but he is, sort of and she can’t put her finger on it but whatever it is smells heavenly). Nope.  
  
It’s because she flips him over and he grins playfully at her, trapped underneath her in her skirt and sheer shirt and bobby heels because she couldn’t find any other shoes and she was in a rush to get out of her house before anyone saw her. He rests his hands on her hips and they’re warm and heavy and she doesn’t want to think of what would happen if his hands traveled elsewhere so she doesn’t and instead finds herself getting lost in those eyes, big and blue and so very Robb—and then thinks about what would happen if they ever had children, children with her hair and his eyes and nose and laugh, but shakes her head free of those thoughts (Cat and Lyanna and Renly and Loras and Sansa and Edmure and Brynden).  
  
Robb Stark will be the death of Myrcella Baratheon because she can actually see herself having a future with him. A pretty white house with red shutters and a white picket fence and a nice car in a suburb somewhere near the ocean, and Robb will have a suit-and-tie job somewhere fancy, like a bank, and she’ll stay at home with the kids. She’ll be on the PTA and he’d be that dad, the one cheering on his kids even if they weren’t exactly the most athletic ones and the one yelling at the referee when he fouls one of the boys or neglects to foul the other team for hurting one of the girls (she’s always wanted to have a lot of children). They’ll have diner as a family every night and he’ll teach them how to ride their bikes in the driveway and clean their scraped knees and look under the bed and read them bedtime stories. They’ll put up the Christmas tree and he’d sneak into the kids’ rooms to slip a dollar under their pillows while they were asleep and claim it was the tooth fairy in the morning. He’d carry them on his shoulders at the zoo, buy them ice cream at the park, take them all out on Halloween in the dorkiest costume he could find just because. He'd kiss their foreheads and make them feel like they mattered, be an example, be strong and not violent, brave and not condescending. He would be the very opposite of her own father, Robert. She feels it in her bones.  
  
Myrcella smiles sadly at him. It’s a future she can’t, ironically, have because of plans involving Trystane and their families. The fact that she’s thinking about something so serious, with Robb Stark, of all people, scares her more than anything else. She shouldn’t be out so late—on the beach, no less—but she’s with Robb, and she knows that as long as she’s with him she’ll be safe. Perhaps even safer than she is with Arys and Jaime.  
  
Robb Stark is dangerous.  
  
Myrcella Baratheon doesn’t care.  
  
Myrcella starts playing with his hair, curly and brown with hints of red and so very unruly. She loves his hair, but she doubts she’ll ever tell him because it’s a secret. (She hopes he never gets the notion to cut off all his hair.) His hands travel to her legs and she squirms on his lap. She smiles and leans forward on his chest, closing her eyes. She listens to the tide and his breathing and his heart, all intertwining and forming a gentle rhythm.  
  
He starts combing through her hair with his fingers and wishes that it could always be like this—quite, calm, simple.  
  
“I think I’m falling in love with you, Cella,” he says, winding a finger through one of her soft curls.  
  
Yes, Myrcella thinks, Robb Stark will be her very undoing.  
  
¤  
  
The day of Myrcella’s birthday marks one week exactly since she’s seen or heard from Robb, and it makes her anxious and jittery for reasons she doesn’t understand. He’s just a boy—no, a man, Robb Stark was definitely a man—and she’s just a girl, and if they have feelings for each other, so be it. She doesn’t have any special claim on him and he doesn’t have one on her. Or does he? It still makes her kind of sad. Robb is probably busy doing whatever it is the Young Wolf does—he never ever talks about it, no matter how much she asks—and she’s busy sitting at home, being fussed over by make-up artists and hair dressers because her mother’s throwing her yet another huge party in her honor.  
  
Yay.  
  
(Myrcella cries at night and doesn't sleep, restless with thoughts of him getting hurt, injured, maimed, or heavens' forbid, killed.)  
  
Myrcella would like nothing more than to meet up with Robb at that small little deli with the really good chicken noodle soup and hide away for the afternoon, but she’ll have to settle for having her face drawn on and hair curled instead. Alysanne helps her into her dress, a gaudy pink number with a lot of tulle and lace and a corset style top that makes her uncomfortable because Cersei insists it be tied as tight as it possibly can be, meaning that her breasts are all but spilling out of it. Her shoes are uncomfortable and pinch her toes, and there are too many bobby pins in her hair. She wants to cry, but she can’t because she’ll ruin her makeup and the girl already left.  
  
The septa shoos her downstairs along with her little brother, Tommen. There’s a photographer waiting for them there, and once again, the Baratheon-Lannisters pretend to be the picture-perfect family. Cersei has the perfect smile, Robert actually shaved for once, Jaime is crisp and neat, and both her brothers are in their Sunday best, blonde hair combed neatly to the side. And then of course there’s Myrcella, the center of attention—like always—swallowing past her tears as she pastes a cheery grin on her face.  
  
She misses Robb something awful.  
  
They’ll be celebrating at a restaurant downtown with some family and friends, and Cersei sees that as an opportunity to show everyone just how much money and power they have.  
  
It makes Myrcella feel ill.  
  
On the way to the restaurant, she’s sandwiched between her father, who seems to be well in his cups already, and Jaime. Arys sits in the front seat and keeps making eyes at Alysanne, who ignores him as she helps Tommen tie his shoes for the eighth time today. At the restaurant itself, Myrcella sits with her father, her mother, her septa, Trystane, and Arianne.  
  
Myrcella feels oddly trapped and somewhere deep inside, longs for the comfort of Robb’s hand on her bare knee. Her hand doesn't feel the same, isn't as heavy, or warm, or rough. Where could he be? She doesn't expect him at her party of course, but she hoped to hear something from him by now. It's depressing.  
  
It’s during dessert that Robert announces, after three more glasses of the strongest wine they had, that Myrcella Baratheon and Trystane Martell are to be wed in exactly two months. Trystane squeezes her hand and kisses her cheek as everyone claps and whistles loudly. She struggles to smile and act like she’s happy—for her father’s sake—but can’t keep it up for long and excuses herself to the bathroom so she can powder her nose. Her septa accompanies her—of course, because she has absolutely no privacy now that the engagement’s official—and she locks herself in a stall and has herself a good, old-fashioned cry for about five minutes. She manages not to mess her makeup up too badly, and the septa, ever the prepared one, touches up her mascara and blush with a teary smile.  
  
When she goes back out, the lights are dimmed and there’s a great big cake on the table, white with pink flowers and seventeen pink candles.  
  
Everyone yells, “Make a wish!”  
  
So she does. She wishes for Robb, to be with Robb and to be happy and for it all to work out the way it’s meant to.  
  
Myrcella then opens her gifts, clothes and books and films and some cassettes and even some lipstick. Trystane got her some book on politics, which didn’t surprise her at all because he was a generally dry and boring person. Arianne bought her some movies, which was nice, except they were all really cheesy ones. Jaime gave her a mini Statue of Liberty that he must have bought on his last trip to New York. Renly gives her free movie tickets, and Loras and Margaery got her a gift certificate to that record shop that she mentioned just once but she still really liked. Her mother gave her a sweater, her father gave her a scarf, Joffrey gave her a bracelet, and Tommen gave her a picture he drew—ever the budding artist—of them together at the park. Septa Alysanne gave her tickets to Chicago and Arys bought her a new bag for her gymnastics class with her name on it, Myrcella B. She smiled fondly and asked Arys to bring her some cake, if he didn’t mind.  
  
“There’s still one more,” he says knowingly, winking at her. And then there’s a box, small and blue with a big red ribbon on it, sitting in the midst of all the other presents. Myrcella looks at him curiously as she shakes it, wondering who it could be from. Everyone she knew or talked to was there and had already given her something. “You’re welcome,” he mouths as she sets it down to open it.  
  
It’s a camera and a film cartridge, black and unassuming, with a tag attached—for the budding young photographer with love, r.s.  
  
Her smile threatens to split her face in two.  
  
¤  
  
“No.” Theon and Robb are scouting out some stags that have taken to selling near the so-called border that divides stag/lion territory from wolf territory.  
  
“Why not?” Robb looks at Theon, crossing his arms over his chest. “She really wants to meet you guys.” Theon puts down his binoculars and takes a sip of coffee, lips in a line.  
  
“So? I’m not gonna get shot ’cause your little girlfriend wants to hang out. No, okay? The answer’s no.”  
  
Theon thought that what Robb and Myrcella had was a silly little two week fling, but it seemed as though he was wrong. They had been seeing each other for a month at the very least and all he heard about was Myrcella this and Myrcella that. It was getting on his nerves. He didn’t like her, didn’t like her family or anything about her, and he didn’t understand why Robb was still giving her the time of day. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Myrcella was up to something sneaky. Why else would she be interested in Robb, of all people, being a Baratheon and all? It didn’t make any sense.  
  
And she was clingy.  
  
It was weird.  
  
“I doubt she’s packing any heat.” Robb shoots Theon a look. “C’mon. Don’t be like that—”  
  
“Okay, okay. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, somehow you manage to sneak her out of her house and she comes down to hang out. Great. What if someone sees her and calls up Jaime or Arys, huh? Or her dad? What are you gonna do when they come down and start raisin’ hell ’cause they think you’re tryin’ to pull somethin’ slick?” Theon raises an eyebrow and starts looking through his binoculars again. “I don’t plan on gettin’ shot any time soon. I rather like being alive, you know.”  
  
“They’re not going to find out.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“Because I do.” Robb picks at the doughnut in the box between them, glancing out the window. “And I already asked Jon, and he said he’ll bring Ygritte and we can make it a sort of group date or something.” Theon shoots him a look. “Do you want to be a third wheel?”  
  
“Seriously? If you already asked Jon why did you ask me?” Theon shoots him a look.  
  
“’Cause I just wanted to see what you thought about her.”  
  
“You already know how I feel about your stupid little girlfriend. I mean, don’t get me wrong,” Theon says, starting up the car once he sees the pair of vagrants heading down an alley. “I think you’re a great guy and stuff. I’m really happy you’re over Roslin and getting your life together. My only problem is that Myrcella’s just a kid. Why’s she trying so hard to be with you? Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that picture?” He doesn’t even see Robb’s hand, but he sure feels it on the back of his head, slapping him harshly. “Hey! You asked me what I thought. I told you. You can’t handle the truth. What if she’s just using you, Robb?”  
  
“For what?”  
  
Theon sighs and rolls his eyes.  
  
“Fine. Whatever. Don’t listen to me. When you end up in a box six feet under ’cause your little baby girl ratted you out, don’t come cryin’ to me.”  
  
“So you’ll come?” Robb asks, ignoring his last remark. Theon can be such a downer sometimes.  
  
“I’ll call Ros and see what she’s up to this weekend. No promises.”  
  
¤  
  
The first time Myrcella ever talks about her family has Robb seeing red.  
  
He’s never been a particularly violent person. He only turned to violence as a last resort in most situations because he felt like there were better ways to handle things. However, when he does indeed resort to violence, it tends to get a little scary, which is why he rarely ever does. He might have to rethink that policy now, because what happened to Myrcella is simply unacceptable and her brother must be dealt with.  
  
Her family is a subject they never really touched upon because most of their time was spent making out in various undisclosed locations and being generally reckless teenagers. And in the event that they did somehow come up she always changed the subject and acted like she hadn’t heard the question. Usually. Unless it involved Robert, Jaime, Renly, or Loras, her four most favorite people in the world—after Robb of course.  
  
It’s not like he doesn’t like her family—okay, well, most of her family. Tommen seems nice, but then again he’s only six. Cersei is rude and that’s something that most people, including Myrcella, agree on, but relatively harmless because she has no real power as far as the business is concerned. Robert is a stinking drunk, but Myrcella will defend him with her dying breath, the same way she’ll defend Jaime (who she bears an uncanny resemblance to, with her sassy smirks and the way she wrinkles her nose when she laughs) and the rest of her protectors, Arys and Renly and Kettleblack, because she loves them and ours is the fury and all that nonsense.  
  
And then there’s Joffrey Baratheon, her older brother.  
  
Robb’s never been the type to pick fights. If Ned asks him to go take care of a situation or something, sure he will. Why not? But there’s a difference between that and fighting someone who doesn’t even know you or have any remote idea of why you’re upset with them in the first place just for the sake of fighting someone. (Like the way Joffrey fights, for example.)  
  
He knows of her older brother Joffrey—snippets of conversation here and there let him know that he’s a spoiled brat that can’t fight very well and usually has to have Jaime or Kettleblack fight his battles for him because he can’t defend himself at all. Jon says that he’s just a thorn in everyone’s side but no one ever does anything about it because he’s Robert Baratheon’s son (though some speculate that none of the Baratheon children are actually Robert’s but Robb doubts that, only because Myrcella is so strong willed and outspoken that there’s no way she couldn’t be a Baratheon). Robb is—was—pretty neutral towards Joffrey because he’s never really met him and doesn’t have any personal reasons to dislike him. It was just by chance that they had never truly run into each other before.  
  
But then he picks up Myrcella because they’re going to the beach with Jon, Theon, Ros, and Ygritte for their big group date. Myrcella can’t wait to meet everyone. Theon and everyone else go on ahead because not everyone would fit in one car and Robb kind of wanted some time with Myrcella anyway. She wears a pair of shorts and a crop top, the strings on her bikini peeking out. She’s wearing her hair down today. Robb has become pathetically enamored by her hair, blonde and brown and curly and she hardly ever wears it down—it’s usually in a ponytail or a bun or a braid or something so seeing it down is quite the treat indeed. She smiles brightly, taking off her sunglasses as she sits down. She kisses him quickly before settling in her seat, setting her bag on the floor. She leans against the seat as Robb takes off and winces, jerking a little.  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
“What? Yeah, I’m fine,” she says dismissively, turning around a little to look out the window. He looks over again, frowning. Something’s weird. And then he sees it—mottled red and purple and painful swollen bruises—and almost swerves off the road, surprised.  
  
“Robb!”  
  
“What the hell is that?!” he exclaims, merging to one of the side lanes before eventually pulling off the road altogether. Myrcella shoots him a look, wondering what he’s freaking out about. Robb can be really dramatic sometimes and it’s something that Myrcella just laughs at because it’s so ridiculous. It’s endearing, but sometimes she wonders if everything is really as big as he makes it out to be.  
  
“What?” She looks down at the gash that travels from her hip to about her spine, and then looks back up at him, shrugging. “It was an accident, Robb. Can we go, please?”  
  
“It doesn’t look like an accident to me. That’s a paper cut and I’m sorry, Cella, but that’s no paper cut.”  
  
“Aren’t we supposed to meet your friends at the beach?” Myrcella asks, frowning at him. She doesn’t want to talk about this—about Joffrey and what he does when he gets so blindingly angry—on what’s supposed to be an fun day with Robb and his friends, but it seems as though Robb is hellbent on getting to the bottom of what happened to her back. He’s so damn protective. It’s not like she doesn’t like it, because she does, but sometimes she wishes that he wasn’t like that all the time.  
  
“They can wait. What happened to you, Cella?”  
  
“Nothing. Let’s go! I thought Theon was impatient?”  
  
“Theon’ll be fine. Is it okay? How did you do that?” She groans, leaning her head against the window. She didn’t enjoyed being babied by Jaime or Septa Alysanne or Arys—especially Arys, because he took it to a whole other level—but being babied by Robb was even worse than all three of them. Mostly because she liked him so much and didn’t want to see him get worried about something she found so very trivial.  
  
Myrcella relents and tells him about how Joffrey got upset because one of the maids didn’t fold his shirts the right way and since Myrcella didn’t know where the girl was, he pushed her into one of Cersei’s many glass tables—just to get him to stop looking at her like that. It doesn’t do any good. If anything, it makes it worse.  
  
“And it’s not like it’s going to leave a scar or anything and if it does, I can always cover it up,” she says simply, inspecting her lower back. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll be okay.” It’s the first time she’s ever brought up anyone—she never talks about Jaime or Arys or Robert or anyone else of her own volition, but then again, they don’t talk about Ned or Cat or any of his siblings very often either—in her house and Robb tries hard not to turn the car around and drag Joffrey out of his house and beat him within an inch of his life. “It’s okay,” she says, smiling at him, and he wants to believe her, except it’s not okay. She shouldn’t be used to something like that and the fact that she is upsets him more than the actual abuse itself. “I’ll be fine, Robb. I promise.”  
  
Ned Stark raised his children with a very firm sense of right and wrong—self-defense is right but abuse is wrong. Once, Robb and Arya were play fighting in the backyard and when Ned found them—let’s just say that Ned was not a happy camper and neither Robb nor Arya could sit comfortably for a few days.  
  
Robb couldn’t just let Joffrey get away with this.  
  
¤  
  
Robb spends the next two days learning Joffrey’s schedule. He gets up in the morning, goes to class—he goes to school with Sansa, apparently—then is picked up by Jaime at quarter after two. From there, the pair heads to get a bite to eat at Pancho’s, then they head to the ’family business’, a restaurant called The Stag which serves as a front for the actual family business, that is, drug trafficking. Joffrey sneaks out at five to visit a girl—a working girl, Robb learns after he approaches her when she’s alone—and they go to a seedy motel in wolf territory, no doubt.  
  
He made it too easy.  
  
¤  
  
“Robb!” Myrcella touches his eye and really, it’s not that bad. He simply smiles and flicks a cigarette out the window. He doesn’t smoke often—maybe four or five times a month, at most—but he just feels like having one because he deserves it. “What happened to you?!”  
  
“If you think I look bad, wait until you see Joffrey.”  
  
Her eyes widened.  
  
“What did you do?!”  
  
“Nothing. I just gave him what he deserved.” She looked at him for a minute before crawling in his lap, knees pressed against his hips as she inspected his face with a frown. She pressed her hands to his face gingerly, running her fingers over his nose and stubbly cheeks, careful to avoid the bruised eye. She leaned her forehead against his for a minute with her eyes closed, sighing. “He got what was coming to him.”  
  
“You really did that for me?”  
  
“Of course,” he says simply. “I’d do anything for you.”  
  
“Is he really hurt?”  
  
“He probably won’t be able to walk for a few days. They’re probably going to have to take him to the hospital.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
Myrcella kisses him so hard that she threatens to knock the wind out of him.  
  
¤  
  
The first time he ever actually talks to Trystane makes him uncomfortable and feel kind of awkward. It wasn’t like he did it on purpose. He was going to pick Myrcella up from gymnastics. It was a Saturday, and since it was so nice outside, he was thinking about maybe going to the beach. Robb ducked into a convenience store across the street to buy a cup of coffee and some cigarettes, and when Robb walks out, there he is, leaning against his car with his arms crossed over his chest.  
  
Robb frowns.  
  
This wasn’t going to be good.  
  
“Can I help you?” Robb asks hesitantly, shoving the cigarettes into his pocket. Trystane looks at him over his sunglasses and then pulls them off, sighing.  
  
“Robb Stark, huh?”  
  
“Maybe. Who needs to know?”  
  
“What’s the big bad Young Wolf doing, hanging out in front some frou-frou studio? Don’t you have better things to do?”  
  
“What’s it to you?” He doesn’t like Trystane to begin with, but all these questions are seriously pissing him off. He’s a lot more pretentious than Robb thought he’d be, with his goody-two-shoes looking haircut and sports coat and black slacks. It’s noon, for crying out loud. It’s no surprise Myrcella hates him.  
  
“You should leave her alone. Or else.”  
  
Robb laughs, sipping some coffee as he shakes his head.  
  
“I know you didn’t come all the way down here to give me some empty silly little threat, did you?” Trystane looks at him blankly. “I think you know better than that.” Trystane reaches for his holster and Robb laughs, shaking his head. He tuts at him, nodding his head toward the door. “You wouldn’t want to cause a scene and scar all those kids now, would you?” Trystane glares at him. “You should leave.”  
  
“This isn’t over, Stark.”  
  
“I’m sure it isn’t, Martell. You just have a nice day.” He waved goodbye at him, a small smile on his face as he watched Trystane stalk back to his car.  
  
¤  
  
Robb isn’t the jealous type. He knows there’s no need for it and there’s really nothing he has to be jealous of—he’s Robb Stark, the Young Wolf, and there’s nothing for him to fear or be upset about. His reputation precedes him and most people don’t look for trouble with him because he’s Robb Stark.  
  
However, the more Myrcella talks about him, the more he finds himself disliking Trystane. She’s crying into his shoulder because she has to marry Trystane at some point and she doesn’t want to and Robb seriously considers murdering him (or at least harming him enough that marrying Myrcella won’t even cross his mind) but says nothing, rubbing her back slowly. They were at the boardwalk, which was for some odd reason, abandoned and mostly empty. She’s still in her school clothes (she called him right after class ended from a pay phone and he picked her up in front of the cinema in a nondescript black car, and she wanted to go to the beach, so they did, and they’ve been there all afternoon), but they’re wrinkled and her socks are starting to slip down her legs again, and her hair’s a mess (but Robb thinks that she looks beautiful because she always does).  
  
He drives her to the bottom of the hill where her estate is. The sun’s just setting and casts a peachy pink color upon the sky. Myrcella picks at her skirt, sniffling.  
  
“I wish we could run away, Robb. I wish we could run away and never look back and that everything would be okay.” Before he can even say anything, she’s already kissed him and is well on her way up to the gates. He leans his head against the steering wheel. He wants a cigarette, but the car smells like Myrcella and he wants it to stay that way, even if it’s going to fade away after a few hours.  
  
¤  
  
Myrcella looks at him dubiously, wrinkling her nose a little. Robb wriggles his eyebrows at her with that gods be damned smile and she could drown in those pools of blue—he could ask her to rob a bank and she would (the boy’s got her hooked). The sunlight plays with his hair, red and gold and brown. Her septa thinks she’s with Arys and Arys thinks she’s with the septa, meaning that she can spend an afternoon with Robb. If Septa Alysanne knew that she were out here, alone, with a boy—except Robb Stark was a man, not a boy, even if he smiled boyishly sometimes—wearing short shorts and a belly shirt, Myrcella would never be able to leave the house again. If Arys knew, he’d probably kill Robb and send Myrcella to the silent sisters himself.  
  
“You won’t go fast?” she asks, playing with the helmet on the seat.  
  
“Scout’s honor,” he says with a laugh, raising his hand. She wrinkles her face a little, looking at him with a smile. She can see him in a little suit with the handkerchief and shorts and boots, hair combed to the side with his cheeky smile.  
  
“Were you really a boy scout?”  
  
“Would you believe me if I told you I was?” She nods and he laughs, shaking his head. “Jon and Theon did it, and when I was little I wanted to do everything they did.” He shrugs, embarrassed, and the hint of pink on his cheeks let her know that he’s just as human as she is—his being a wolf doesn’t make him less human than anyone else, less than Jaime or Arys.  
  
She’s wearing his jacket. It hangs off her shoulders and she has to roll up the sleeves a little just so her hands can come out. It smells like him and she’s half tempted to keep it, except that she’ll have no way to explain why she keeps a leather jacket two sizes too big in the back of her closet.  
  
Myrcella sighs resolutely and puts the black helmet on, squinting through the visor. She climbs on after Robb and wraps herself tightly around him, resting her head on his back. He squeezes her hand and she smiles, and before she knows it, they’re ripping down the street, her face buried in his back and a grin on his.  
  
¤  
  
Her first confession of love is, oddly enough, is at the Baskin-Robins on the boardwalk. They could very easily get caught—but also very easily blend in, because Miami could be rather large when it wanted to be.  
  
Robb is laughing about something—something that she can’t remember but whatever it is, it’s something that really was kind of funny (maybe it was the septa’s way of saying okay or Arys’ stumbling affections for her or maybe it was just the fact that they were together for once without the stresses of Theon or Jon or Jaime or Arys looming over them). And his smile is so bright and he really looks so much different when he’s not so serious and then it hits her, and it’s more shocking than anything else (in a I didn’t know I was capable of liking anyone so much, maybe I don’t like you anymore, maybe I actually love you sort of way) and it scares her a little because it’s so unexpected.  
  
“Cella?”  
  
He’s the only one who calls her that. She hasn’t ever really felt this way before and it makes her feel fuzzy and warm and special, and she has a feeling that the blush on her face isn’t due to the fact that it’s almost 90°F out here or that it’s horrifically humid, but rather, can be very easily pinned on the boy sitting in front of her with his big blue eyes (it should be a crime really) and pouty lips and—  
  
“I love you,” she blurts out, gnawing on her bottom lip. He’s quiet for a second—but it’s literally a second, because the next thing she knows, he almost knocks over the table in his haste, peppering her face in kisses and I love you toos.


End file.
